I decide to do another bee-sound-experiment. The fist one I did was in 2012 with the Transparent Beehive. Then, the focus was on exhibiting in realtime the sound of the colony. During talks and presentations I was making observations and linking them to the amplified sounds made by the bees.
This time I want to do it differently. I will record at regular intervals the hum of the colony and analyse it thoroughly afterwards. I also want to link the sounds with the environmental sensor data (temp, humidity, solar radiation) in the surroundings of the apiary, with the sensor data inside the beehive (temperature, humidity and vibration of the comb) as well with video images in- and outside the beehive.
For this setup, I will collaborate with Vincent Malstaf (sound engineer), Balthazar de Tonnac (computer scientist), Bob Motté (electronica engineer) and Bart de Boer (computer scientist Artificial Intelligence, complex systems, bio-acoustics).
The Raspberry technology offers us a not too expensive solution to build out a suitable lab-setup for this research. The data will be available on the opensensordata website.

What data did we collect already in the garden and what did we store yet in the apiary’s archive (2009-2014)?
– temperature and humidity (timestamped) inside several beehives have been recorded yet for many years
– a photographic and video archive (timestamped) of the garden and the apiary has been maintained for over 5 years
– a 10-months videostream (inside the beehive) is yet available on the okno.pandora.be website
– different small low power sensors across the garden make localized observations and data are displayed on the opensensordata website (soil humidity and temperature, air humidity and temperature, solar radiation, Co2)

How will we go on from there, may 2014?
– we will work with a Warre Beehive from Holtermann in Germany. This beehive is made from first quality lime wood and once treated with ecological paint and a mix from propolis and ethanol, it will stand the temperate weather without problems.
– we will install the sound lab in the summerhouse. This place has just the right size for what we need to set up: an 8 channel soundcard, a computer, a lot of cables, speakers, a hub with internet connection, a desk and a chair to make notes, a blackboard.
– we will equip the Warré beehive with all necessary ICT (sensors, microphones, camera’s) to collect the necessary data for our research.