A colleague at work has parents who keep bees, and has instrumented their hives. See here for the top level, and the webcam. As well as being jolly fun, its also quite useful. Looking at the weights of the hives, especially through the year (bottom pic) you can see how they are doing over winter, when the flow has peaked, and so on. There is also a bee counter (in units of bees per 5 mins, averaged over the day, I think; its done by only allowing the bees in/out via a set of holes, each of which has a photo-detector above them). The activity is very different to what I would expect, in that there is no rape-seed peak in the summer.
I'm sure Olivier can be persuaded to describe his set-up in more detail if any bee-keepers are interested :-)
I am a Dragon. I emerge from my Egg. 
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I'm sure Olivier can be persuaded to describe his set-up in more detail if any bee-keepers are interested :-)
The Bee-O-Matic sounds like a winner! It's really great what applying some imaginative technology to a situation can do!
Thanks and have a great weekend!
Dave Briggs :~)
Posted by: Dave Briggs | January 25, 2008 4:52 PM
Yes Please!
Posted by: Hank Roberts | January 25, 2008 6:17 PM
Wow, a bunch of black screens. How cool. (oh. wrong time zone. my bad).
Posted by: ringo | January 25, 2008 8:26 PM
You might be interested in this
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/Bees/bees2.html
Posted by: Eli Rabett | January 26, 2008 10:30 PM