okay so today we have some more fun and interesting stuff to do what I'm going
to do is look at these beads and we're seeing bees actually bearded and mass on
the outside of our beehives and this is happening all over the apiary now we
have cold mornings and we have an abundance of bees in the work force in
these colonies so what they do is they forage out through the day they're
bringing in so much nectar and so many resources that the workforce actually
moves outside the hive and collects on the side if you notice on the landing
board here - that's what's called bearding when they hang and collect
underneath the energy level of these bees is very low when they're on the
outside and the reason is because they want to conserve their resources and
here at the landing board at this reducer you'll notice that these bees
are just Fanning their wings as fast as they can and that's because of humidity
levels inside the hive are extremely high right now as is the heat speaking
of heat look at this thermal image of the landing board and you can see that
that lightest color dead center is the vent to the hive and you'll see that
they are sending out temperatures that go all the way up into the 80s while if
you look at the right-hand scale here there are portions in the field of view
here that are down to 40 and even 39 degrees so it's a cold day out there now
what's the temperature of the bees that are collected on the outside and are all
of their bodies the same temperature well we're gonna find out with this
thermal imager
all the way up to 84.2 now at the sensor in the dead center of the field of view
there
this is just a close-up of the bees beating on the landing board of course
as I mentioned before now this is the eastern side and what we have going on
here notice their outstretched fore limbs as they cling to that telescoping
top what happens is once they lock their little feet on there they're using
almost no energy it's a latching mechanism that's in the
design of the bee's feet that once they hook into something they can hold
on without expending energy to do that so now we're gonna take a look first of
all this is a couple inches thick and the bees are just heavy-duty out here
and we're gonna also take a look thermally at whether or not all of these
bees have the same temperature and they're using the same energy at the
same time there's a lot of bees I don't know what's going on this year but this
fall all of my hives have generated huge numbers of workers and they're bringing
in nectar at an incredible rate but let's see the thermal image now look at
this the dark purple and blue areas of course are the colder beats all the way
down to 60 61 degrees and you'll notice if you look at the scale to the right on
this screen it says 82 83 so then some of these hot spots some of the warmer
bees that are active actually have a body temperature at temps in the 80s
so this is really interesting to look at those that are conserving and of course
it's early morning so these bees are waking up and starting to move and this
is the east side so it's going to get the sunlight first but it's very
interesting to be able to look at these with a thermal image and see that there
are hot bodied bees in this group and others that are still virtually dormant
and they're allowing their body temperatures to get down to 60 or 59 58
degrees in order to conserve energy on the outside of the hive
and again that upper left temperature that's bobbing around 71 degrees 73 76
those are the temperatures at the circle in the dead center of the field of view
here
and of course the background temperature is 46 degrees so it's a cold morning now
this is a valuable tool because we can look at beehives in the apiary
and look at the hot spots we can tell which hive bodies are occupied and
generating the most heat and of course the more bees the more heat they're
generating and again they've collected on the outside of the hives because it's
actually too hot inside and the humidity levels are too high so they're getting
the air out and of course there's a yellowjacket trying to get in
unsuccessfully a look again this is another hive look at the number of bees
that are collected on the outside it's too hot and it's too humid inside these
are field bees and again the venting that's coming out is in the 80s but
we're gonna look at the body temperatures and see that there are
heater bees and those that are remaining cool in the morning air and just look at
the little hotspots moving around here it's very interesting to have this tool
and again if you look up or right on the scale some of these hotspots are up to
93 degrees and this is on the outside of the hive in a morning where the
temperatures in the high 30s low 40s
that's something I want you to notice when you see the bees moving around and
then you see the yellow dot that appears showing their temperature which is
offset from the physical parameters of the bee that's because this camera uses
parallax lensing one of the lenses is the lower well one of the lenses shoots
lower and that is just for the image and then the lower lens on the camera is
offset a little so it gathers heat or shows the heat print and that's why you
see the bees moving off to the left here and then the yellow dots above them we
have two lenses at play here to give us this compound image that we're looking
at but what a great tool we're going to be able to look at our hives and
immediately know number one if they're occupied number two how strong the hive
is and how much temperature elevation is occurring at the entry board and at that
reducer so we're going to know that the bees are doing well inside or not and
this is a front and I'll of course show you the camera because I'm you're
probably dying to know this is a FLIR c2 and it's a handheld self-contained
thermal imaging camera it can also take normal pictures if you look at the front
here the upper lens is for the normal picture capture and the lower larger
diameter lens is the thermal imaging lens also off to the side there you see
that it has a light built into it for flash or for a constant light so that
you can see what it is you're looking at the camera does not collect video on its
own it only collects still images so I made
the video by running another camera up against the screen so that we can get a
live view of what's going on with these honeybees but I'm just beginning to
explore all the different things I'm going to be able to do with this little
c2 camera center button on top is for taking the still picture and that's the
on/off button this thing goes in your pocket it's pretty heavy-duty the way
it's made it has a nice bumper built around it and I'm super happy with it
the weather is about to turn it's gonna get bad winters gonna come in the bees
are going to need that pollen for the protein to grow and develop and they're
also going to be needing to bring in as much nectar as they can before winter
arrives full force I hope you enjoyed this video and I hope that you got
something out of it thermal imaging is going to be a
terrific tool for me here in my apiary as we learn more about the honeybees and
their energy consumption thanks as always for watching