Reading the Scale Hive
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A hive scale under a colony replaces many looks into the hive.
A hive scale under a colony replaces many looks into the hive. It serves two purposes: in winter, observing feed consumption, and in season, observing the nectar flow. In automatic operation, measurement intervals of five minutes are usual, since only then do the daily pattern and individual events become visible at all.
The curve can be read. A slow decrease over the week means feed consumption, a slow decrease in the morning the start of foraging activity. A sudden decrease around midday points to a swarm, a sudden decrease in the morning to a honey harvest, a sudden jump upward to an expansion by the beekeeper. A rapid increase outside the nectar flow period is robbing. An increase with a clear peak in the early afternoon indicates a blossom flow, an increase without that peak indicates honeydew.
The key to interpreting the curve only works if your own interventions are known, since expanding and harvesting produce the same jumps as natural events. And the scale measures a single colony: it shows what is coming in at the location, not how each individual colony is doing. Scale colonies are therefore often kept in a small shelter that protects not only against theft but against rain and moisture, which would otherwise distort the curve.