- the rate of expansion or decline of bee flights might indicate hive health
- the expansion or decline of orientation flights over days might signal queen health
- the time shift between peaks of bees leaving and returning might indicate number of foragers and distance to pollen/nectar source.
- comparison between two or move hives to test for manipulations; such as,
- adding/removing honey supers
- internal sugar syrup feeding
- oxalic acid mite treatments
- honey bee education or museum type installation
- introduction to electronics, soldering and micro-controller programming
Equating bee flight data and orientation flights to over all hive health or queen health seems possible. Orientation flights is a behavior of 'middle aged' bees about 20 days old. Before foraging bees of this age will leave the hive as a group at around mid day resulting in an easy to see ~45min peak in data.
If there is a drop in orientation flights it might indicate a reduction in egg laying ~42 days prior (22 days hatch + 20 days till forage).
It's easy to see small but distinct shifts between bees OUT and bees IN. This indicates both a volume of bees that are leaving and returning together as well as a rough distance or time to the foraging location.