As apart of my studies and reading about bee communicaion and the various noises and sounds they produce within the hive, I came across the work carried out by Eddie Woods back in the 60's. It turns out that Eddie, who was a sound engineer for the BBC by profession, was a bit of a pioneer and applied his knowledge of acoustics and electronics to listening to the bees. In adition to this he also studied the behaviour of the bees and was able to link certain sounds to a particular type of behaviour, especially swarming. Such was Eddies depth of knowledge, he ws convinced that bee swarming could be predicted by listening to a particular range of sounds made by the bees. Eddie produced several versions of what became known as the 'Apidictor', and although these units were never mass produced, rumor has it that 200 to 300 were produced over the years. For more information on Eddies work, click here and it does make for some interesting reading.

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Meanwhile on various bee keeping forums the Apidictor and Eddie Woods' early research was mentioned every now and then and several individuals bemoaned the fact that there was no modern day equivalent of the Apidictor. As a practising electronic engineer, this made me prick my ears up and I just had to investigate the possibility of producing a similar piece of equipment, both  simply and cheaply. The end result is what I call the Apimonitor. Its main features are very similar to those of the original Apidictor but it is engineered using modern surface mount miniature components. It is not a intended to be a copy of Eddie's design but it does make use some of the knowledge aquired by Eddie when listening and observing the bees.

 

If you'd like to find out more about how it works and the design and use of the unit, click on the buttons below to view the Apimonitor project or the handbooks. A word of warning, if you are a techno phobe - the documents are by their very nature fairly technical and might be heavy going for some. See the User Handbook for concise user details.