What do continuous weight and temperature monitoring tell us about honey bee colony status and activity?

Continuous monitoring of honey bee hive weight and internal temperature provide useful data on colony growth and activity. Raw continuous weight and temperature data can be broken into two main parts: the running average and the detrended within-day data. Running average weight data provides information on general trends in colony growth and food availability, while the amplitude of the detrended weight data is a measure of hive activity and food demand. Detrended weight data can also be used to detect the acute loss of foragers. Hive temperature and its variability, as measured using detrended temperature data, can indicate the presence or absence of brood. In the winter, when hives cannot be inspected, continuous hive weight data can be used to calculate the rate of food consumption, while continuous temperature data indicate energy expenditure as well as the location of the bee mass.