Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum

BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. => Topic started by: Shep1478 on June 05, 2010, 10:39:58 PM

Title: Infrared Camera and Bees..
Post by: Shep1478 on June 05, 2010, 10:39:58 PM
Just curious if an Infrared camera might mess with the girls?  I have a cam pointed to the front of the hive about 20" away and i'm streaming the video and uploading the image to my webpage.  Do you think it'll bother them? So far all seems well!    :-D

Kinda neat to be able to watch from work!
Title: Re: Infrared Camera and Bees..
Post by: riverrat on June 05, 2010, 11:31:00 PM
gregg swobee in hayes kansas has done a lot of infra red heat imaging of hives in the winter time showing the heat of the cluster and where the heat is escaping the hive. i dont think he hangs out on this board but he does on another. he gave a very interesting talk at our state bee meeting on heat imaging he does energy audits on houses for people to improve there effeciency of there house.
Title: Re: Infrared Camera and Bees..
Post by: fish_stix on June 06, 2010, 01:52:50 AM
It can't hurt them. A IR camera only "sees" IR. It doesn't project heat out into the atmosphere.
Title: Re: Infrared Camera and Bees..
Post by: FRAMEshift on June 06, 2010, 11:18:06 PM
Quote from: fish_stix on June 06, 2010, 01:52:50 AM
It can't hurt them. a IR camera only "sees" IR. It doesn't project heat out into the atmosphere.
Right.  Otherwise, it would be like saying that your eyes change what you are looking at.  The heat flows in one direction... from the hive to the camera.
Title: Re: Infrared Camera and Bees..
Post by: PaloAltoMark on June 07, 2010, 10:00:53 AM
Hi Gents:

Many IR security camera are fitted with IR lights so that they produce enough light to see into dark rooms, parking lots, etc.  The camera mentioned by the poster may or may not have these lights on them.  I don't know weather IR would bother bees or not.  I suppose it depends on weather they can see that wavelength of light.

By the way, I have a bee cam set up which you can view during daylight hours US Pacific Coast Time.  It's an external security camera trained on the hive entrance.  No IR.  However, I put little windows onto the hive body to have a look inside and plan to reposition the camera there at some point.  The link is at my web site PlanterTomato.com.  It's the May 21 2010 posting

http://www.plantertomato.com/2010/05/honey-bee-web-cam-streaming-video.html (http://www.plantertomato.com/2010/05/honey-bee-web-cam-streaming-video.html)