The six colony apiary sits at the edge of an urban to rural transition. The area is partially wooded, with fields and residences intermixed. The hives were moved to Athens in September 2011 from Scaly Mountain pending fabrication of other units.
Hive:
The hive consists of a 10-frame brood chamber of 2 deeps, with 2-4 8 frame mediums for honey supers. The queen is a local mutt captured from a swarm.
Scale:
The hive is exposed to weather, the scale is beneath the hive and protected from inclement weather. The scale is a home-crafted electronic logging scale fabricated from an Adam Equipment CPWplus200 440 capacity scale with R S232 interface, sampling at 5 min intervals. Resolution is 0.1 lb. The information is accessable on the internet at hivetool.org.
For more information and data, contact the observer at pvonk@windstream.net.