Here are a few things you should check when installing your hive scale.
- Ensure that the hive is fairly leveled and that it sits on all of its surface. Havins a hive not stable hangs on a corner for example will false measurements.
- Avoid the sun if you can, it will work better on the shadow because of lower thermal dilatations. For this reason, on single-bar scales, the rear of the hive is often a better option than the front.
- Do not remove any of the plastic envelopes! They all protect the scale. There is no superfluous packaging.
- EXPERT TIP: If you want to verify how good you've done the job placing the scale, you can use Bees App to check about weight balance on the 2 or 4 loadcells. There are two ways to do that : The first one one is going to the device details and checking that the load cells are measuring the same weight range (see picture below).
Checking balance on a BroodMinder-W4 with 4 load cells J1,J2,J3,J4 (bottom of the screen) - The second option is activating the Real Time feature (in Bees app too). Note that here balance is automatically computed. You should be in the range 35-65%.
Half vs full weigh scales
Note that on single bar scales like BroodMinder-W you will need a 4cm wooden wedge to compensate for the scale height on the opposite side. This scale weighs half of the hive and doubles the measured value – considering that the weight is centered between the front and the back of the hive. Which is not always true, but enough to acurately follow nectar flows.
Depending on the hive balance, the wedge and the cluster positions, there may be a difference between the actual total weight and the measured weight. But this discrepancy is not really significant since we are interested in the weight variations and not in the absolute weight per se.
Remember that all our scales have an integrated ambient temperature sensor. This is a good way to have a fairly accurate measurement of the apiary temperature.
To go further, please refer to the User Guide on doc.MyBroodMinder.com.
