Patent ID: 8152590

Claim:
A method of assessing operational productivity of a beehive from which bees populating the beehive launch to forage for pollen and nectar, the beehive having an entrance from which flying bees launch at different times to forage, comprising: positioning an acoustic pickup device at a location to pick up and provide an audio signal representing sounds produced by bees flying near the beehive entrance; analyzing the audio signal to distinguish sounds representing flying bees launching from locations around the beehive entrance from ambient background noise and to provide indications of flying bee launches; counting for each of multiple predetermined temporally spaced apart periods and in response to the flying bee launch indications a number of the flying bees launching from locations around the beehive entrance to produce bee sortie data; and processing the bee sortie data to determine whether over time the numbers of flying bees launching from locations around the beehive entrance during the predetermined periods fall outside of an operational tolerance and thereby provide an indication of the operational productivity of the beehive.