Mass moss mess

The one thing you discover when you start rigging CCTV all over the place is this: there is never enough. 

I wasn't at home today, so I was reliant on checking our two home-bound disabled bees via skype and an HD camera in their tub. The setup works brilliantly actually and the Microsoft HD camera is superb quality. But, there are always blind spots in the view which need filling with other cameras! 

The view this morning in the box was crazy - mayhem had occurred in the small hours with moss being tossed all over the box and flowers with honey-water cast aside with abandon. I was a bit concerned, actually, that all the food supply might have been destroyed. It was made a bit worse by the fact I was viewing the iPhone the wrong way round so not all of the picture was showing: which gave the impression that the camera itself had been moved, which was really quite incomprehensible!

"Big Bee" (not named yet) was going a bit beserk every time I looked - it wasn't really clear what was going on. Was it looking for a way out of the box after 36 hours of reasonable calm? Was it hungry? Was it resorting to some sort of "nest fixing" behaviour (I use "fixing" in the loosest possible sense). Don't really know. 

For a while we were concerned for the whereabouts and welfare of Holly - until eventually I saw her; and again periodically throughout the day. At about 6.30pm she was on one of the flowers for a good 10 - 15 minutes, hopefully having a good drink of whatever was left. I managed to grab a screen shot from the iPhone.

Holly having a drink from the daisy. Moss everywhere!

Overall she was pretty calm today from what I could tell - certainly not prodding and shoving "Big bee", at least while on camera. So, a slight change in behaviour. I wonder if "Big bee" had been exerting a bit more dominance? Certainly the way it was racing round the box and leaving chaos everywhere was a change in behaviour too. 

I really don't quite know what to make of today's behaviour - it was all a bit frantic and at times a little concering; and only a closer inspection once home will reveal more of what has been going on and whether out two bees are co-operating or not.

One of my thoughts is whether the moss has been moved to the centre of the box (this would mimic the structure of the Koppert Hive we have outdoors) - which would be a truly fascinating discovery if it has: our first real evidence that our bees are organising their environment as they see fit. 

Pro & Cons of Skype for Public Webcam

In the first instance I have chosen to use Skype to get a webcam up and running at the beebox, with the ability to access it remotely over the internet.

Initially I simply chose this technology solution because it meant nothing new to install, since I already had skype and already had it working with my existing USB webcamera(s). I'm using a Samsung NC20 netbook at the moment as the camera host, and it doesn't have a lot of grunt, so I stuck with what I knew worked. 

It turns out there are some pros and cons of the Skype solution, which I thought might be useful to list here.

Pros

• It's free and lots of people have it. (And in my case, I didn't have to install anything else). 
• You can pre-configure Skype to use a particular webcam (if you have multiple webcams connected) and also configure it to auto-answer calls with video. This is, of course, essential if you are going to access it remotely over the internet! So, you just call in remotely, and it answers with the webcam. 
• You can limit access to only those on your contact list - this provides a simple method of access control and allows you to control privacy
• Since the video stream is provided "on demand", it is not active and broadcasting all the time. Therefore it is not consuming any of your broadband bandwidth allowance whilst no-one is viewing the camera. 
• Although you can't choose which camera to view remotely, you can configure skype locally with different cameras, so you can set it up to show different views. We have an indoor and an outdoor camera at the moment. 
• There's quite a nice, free iPhone app for Skype which you can use to view the camera. 

Cons

Some of the strengths of Skype are also weaknesses, depending on how you want to use it.

• So, for example, only being able to accept one call at a time. This means it is not really a broadcast system. If our project was to get popular (it'd be nice to think it had educational value) then this might ultimately rule out skype as we will need more than one person at a time to be able to view the camera. 
• It is not easy to record the video - this isn't built into Skype natively. Although Skype supports plugins, most of them are audio only - I didn't find a useful video recorder plugin. 
• There is no motion detection capability. 

However, as system to get up and running, to test camera positions and lighting, and to let a few select people have access, it has proved more than adequate and I'll continue running with it until/unless demand dictates an alternative solution.