GENERAL STATE CONTROL MODE
“General State Control” mode is the most appropriate to assess the general state of bee colonies at any time of year and day. It takes into account seasonal and temporary changes taking place in the bee colony. Formation of diagnostic messages that is characteristic for this mode, takes place on the basis of data on acoustic signals of bees, collected by lots of scientists from around the world. Furthermore, our own observations and our own unique algorithm of analysis is being used in this mode.
In the summer time, this mode allows you to evaluate the working capacity of the colony, whether or not there is forage and its approximate power, to assess the presence and number of passive bees and the probability of swarming. According to results of control, our device provides text guidance and diagnostic messages. Only this mode allows you to precisely determine the overall state of the bee family.
This mode operates in both summer and winter. Our device will enable to check wintering bee families with minimal disturbance and enable easy definition of the basic parameters of bee family wintering. The device determines the presence or absence of ventilation, indicating if there is enough air in the hive. The family can not live in winter in the atmosphere of high content of carbon dioxide. You may need to increase ventilation. In addition, according to degree of activity of bees during the winter, you can indirectly understand the possibility, that the family strongly irritated by mites, or received poor-quality food and the bees started having problems with digestion. Such situations, if they arise at the beginning or the middle of winter, require the intervention of the beekeeper.
- First of all, when you start to work with the hive, adjust the microphone gain in order to see all the peaks and highs from blue to red. With microphone gain, (use the rotary control with the toggle "MIC", switched to ON ) you can choose the most suitable signal amplification to draw a clear picture of the signals. This is needed for further work using all modes of the device. Normally, it is needed to choose the desired gain, for each bee family. But practically, you don't needed to change it, if you see good signals of the bees in this beehive. This adjustments are made in Monitoring mode, which is the "default" mode, when you are starting your work with device, and between measurements, if any other mode is not selected.
- Before you start working with these modes, it is necessary to make the installation using 2 buttons on the screen next to Main menu button of the device, and one in the Main menu of the device.
- First button selects the time of day (day\night) but not in the sense of light and dark, rather in terms of flight activity of the bees. Flight of the bees for nectar is either still happening or it stopped.
- Another button - is the choice of the season winter\summer. The division is also conditional and means if the honey harvest is on or not. Summer is when the bees fly for nectar. Winter – is the period of the passive location of the bees in the conditions close to the winter cluster without any flights. Thus, by selecting the installation with these two buttons, we will define the expected seasonal and temporary state of bee colony, i.e. the range of their likely behavior.
- Press the "Menu" button on the screen and go to the main menu of the device. Press the "Measuring lag" button. A new window will open where you can choose the length of the delay interval between pressing the "Start" button and the actual beginning of the measurements. This is done in order to isolate the devise from sources of interference - street noise, wind, etc., when measuring from the top through the lap. This interval will allow you to either cover up a smartphone put on a lap with pillow, or close the cover of the hive, or use other means to eliminate acoustic noise, including noise from the beekeeper ...
- In order to take a measurement, you need to set it's interval. 15-30-60 sec.
- To select a number of intervals, used for averaging of the result and getting rid of short interference, you must choose the number of measurements for averaging. 1-5-10 intervals.
- The best is 5x15sec. This is the choice, based on our practical results.
- Then just press the "Start" button and, with the delay that you set in the Main menu, the process of measuring and averaging the results will begin.
- After the time required for the measurement, the image of Amplitude Spectrum will appear on the screen. And the message about an alleged condition of the colony will appear in the diagnosis window.
- Longer measurement interval and larger number of samples for averaging will give you, higher probability of a reliable diagnostic results. You can save the picture, using the "FOTO" button. Screen with diagram can be enlarged to fit an entire screen by clicking in the relevant area.
The size of text in the text window on the screen of app can be too big or too small - this is up to the settings of your smartphone...
If you need to correct it , then you should go to "settings" - "screen"-"text size" of your smartphone, and make text bigger or smaller ....
Set-Up
Use of internal mic