Here's an image showing the actual concept of the alpha kit using the spark core

One interesting problem that we will have to manage is the sheer amount of damage that the bees can do to the sensor housing. Here are a few shots of the quilt box that I made to house the microphone when we were gathering the audio data from the Langstroth Hive.

For the Warre's hives and Top bars this isn't so much of an issue, but I underestimated how aggressive the bees would be against a quilt box that isn't protected by a top cloth.

Hey @Jagungal do you have some before photos?

Yeah, here are some photos of me installing the box last year. The mistake I made was using a quilt box that had the mesh simply stapled directly on without a shim - thus meant that they were working at the join of where the mesh meets the edge and heavily propolysing it. You would then get little tears in the mesh which the bees would expand on.

I think that the solution is actually pretty simple - we just use a screened top cover underneath the quilt box. As long as there are enough vent holes in the top cover there should be a fairly direct transmission of humidity.temp and sound through to the sensor array.