Measuring Brood Digitally; an easy way to measure and record brood production in your colony.
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Abstract
In apicultural research and honey bee management, it can be important to measure the reproductive output of the colony (i.e. worker production). Fast Spring build-up is desirable for honey production and pollination, and stress on colonies is often manifest by reductions in brood production. The usual way of measuring comb use has been by a threaded grid reference frame (1 in x 1 in squares delineated by thread) and counting the squares with capped brood, with uncapped brood, drone cells, honey and pollen. Brood production can be measured most efficiently and quickly through estimates of areas of capped brood in the hive. Even so, the grid and counting method is time consuming and results only in estimations. Digital photography and computer-aided analyses of the images captured eases the task of calculating brood area (capped-brood) for management and research. This method can be equally well applied to measuring areas of capped honey, pollen and drone brood by simple adaptation of the methods described below.