FLIR ONE INFRARED IMAGING BEEHIVES
In this No Nonsense Beekeeping episode, Laurence Edwards reviews the FLIR Generation 3 infrared camera module for Android phones, purchased for £173. He explains why an infrared camera could be useful for monitoring winter colonies without opening hives, then demonstrates the device on several hives. He describes the hardware (80×60 thermal sensor, separate battery, app for stills and short video) and notes its low resolution and limited temperature differential detection. Across multiple hives—full, empty, sun‑exposed, and with roofs removed—he finds the camera only reliably shows large heat sources (e.g., a hand) and struggles to distinguish bee clusters through insulated hive walls. The images are pixelated, often indistinguishable between occupied and empty hives, and the device fails to provide the detailed heat footprints needed for winter monitoring. Laurence concludes the product is not fit for purpose for beekeepers, labeling it a luxury gadget. He suggests that only higher‑end thermal cameras (costing several thousand pounds) might work, but at a price far above most hobbyist budgets. He advises against purchasing the FLIR Gen 3 for beekeeping, while remaining open to future technology reviews.
Chapters
Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping. Today I'm going to show you the FLIR infrared camera for Android. So in this video, I'm going to give you a full review of the FLIR infrared camera for Android. I'm going to talk about its good points, I'm going to talk about its bad points, I'm going to give you a full review, and I'm going to tell you what I think about it. Now I've bought this unit here. It's just a little attachment that goes on the bottom of your Android or iPhone. I bought it from Amazon, cost me £172.99, but kind of fluctuates between £180 and £250 normally. The version that I've got is the Generation 3 model, and they do a Pro version as well. The Pro version costs about £350 to £400, but I'm reviewing the Generation 3 model today. I paid for it myself, nobody's given me this. I'm going to give you my full, frank, and honest review of this product. So why do we need an infrared camera for beekeeping? Now I thought about this for a long time. I'd like to see what's going on in the colonies during winter. Now you can use a Perspex, like a clear crown board, and you can see in from the top, but what that doesn't show you is the depth, how far down those bees go, And I've always kind of toyed with the idea and liked the idea of using an infrared camera to get in there and have a look at that colony whilst not even having to open it up. So that's the plan, that's what we're gonna do in this video. We're gonna have a little play around with it. I'll give you the review, I'll show you some colonies, I'll give you a look at some of the photos, I'll give you a look at some of the videos that it takes, and I'll just give you my general impression as to whether I think it's a good product for you to buy to add to your arsenal. Now you might think, hang on, this is no-nonsense beekeeping and we're talking about infrared cameras for Android phones. It's a little bit too technical maybe. And my argument to that would be the no-nonsense element comes in where we're saying we're not going to open up the colony. We're not going to do any messing around in winter. We're doing a laid-back kind of approach and we're not trying to open things up and cause issues unnecessarily during winter. From October through to February, you really shouldn't be going into your colonies. Now, that's not to say if there's an emergency, so if they're running really low on food, do you know what I mean, crack them open, get in there, and give them a good feed. But in an ideal world, you shouldn't be going in, shouldn't be touching your colonies during those colder months. This device, however, or an infrared camera, can give you the ability to see inside and give you that assurance that everything's okay. So that's the reason that I bought this device, and that's the reason that I'm doing this review, just to see if this little device can give us a way to see into the hive without opening it up. So first things first, the FLIR Generation 3 Android plug-in device. This is what it looks like. It's got 2 thermal imaging sensors on the back power button there and a charging point. So you need to charge this separately. It doesn't draw power down from the phone that you're using it with, needs to be charged separately. Comes with an app, so you just download the app on the Google Play Store, and I find the app's really simple to navigate, puts you straight in there and lets you use the camera. Now the camera will let you take still images, and it will also let you take video images as well. The videos can last— I've had it up to a couple of minutes long. There's obviously quite a lot of stutter when you're moving things around, but it does allow you to use video images. Now, the pixels on this device are pretty limited. It's an 80 by 60 display. So if you think kind of like a full HD display is 1920 by 1080, this is 60 by 80. So it's incredibly pixelated. But that's not what we're looking for here. We're not looking for high definition images of the hives. We're looking to see what that heat map or that heat print is of the hives to give us an indication as to where the heat's being emitted and whether there is a colony in there. Now it opens up a whole host of other questions for me about what are the best materials in terms of keeping the heat in, like a polystyrene hive, or does a wooden hive emit more heat out because it's not as insulative as a poly hive? Now I'm going to leave all of those questions for a separate video because I think it's a really interesting topic, but I'm not sure that this device here has the full kind of capability to give me the data that I could use to kind of analyze any of those questions. So we'll park those and we'll leave those for a different video. So as I said, in this video I'm going to give you a full review, give you a demonstration of how this little device works, And I'm going to give you my recommendations as to whether I think it's a good product for you to buy. So I would normally say at this point I'll get my bee suit on and we'll go and look at the colonies and open them up. Obviously, we don't need to do that today. So what we're going to do, I'll just move this camera over there and I'll show me working this device just to show you kind of how easy it is and to give you a bit of a live feel as to some of the images that I'm getting. Right. So as you can see, the bees are actually active today. It's crazy. It feels really cold. But if you look at the thermometer, it's about 14 or 15 degrees today. It's back end of November here, so the bees really shouldn't be flying, but it's been pretty mild throughout the whole of November. Every time I come down here, there's a few bees flying. They're foraging, they're getting a little bit of ivy pollen still, probably picking up a little bit of nectar. There's still some ivy in flower, but all of these boxes here are pretty much full to the brim with bees. So I'm really hoping that this device here is going to show me that these boxes are full of bees. So here we go, here are some of the readings that I'm getting. I mean, I wouldn't really trust that temperature gauge there, it's not very accurate, but if you move this just off to one side and I show you my handprint, I mean, it's picking that up really, really nicely. When I got this home, I thought, wow, this is going to work so well. Obviously, the kind of white bits are the hottest bits, and then goes through orange and the, the pink bits at the end where it's a little bit colder. I had this at home and I thought, this is going to be incredible. We're going to see the best clusters. I'm going to show the position of the clusters and everything. Then when you hold it onto the bees, I just seem to get this image like this, and all that's showing me there is that there's probably some bees in there. And I don't really know whether that's— there's bees in there Or whether that's just the sun that's been on these in the morning. It's a really difficult one, and I'll try and get a little bit closer. And obviously I've put up some of the images to show you exactly kind of what I'm seeing, not just a video of the, the footage that's coming out of the app. But I have to say, I'm really not very impressed with this at all. It's, it's just not fit for purpose in terms of what I'm asking it to do. So on this video here Do you know what I mean? I can't really tell a huge amount from the images. I can see that there's probably some bees in there. I can see that they're maybe towards the right-hand side a little bit more than the left-hand side, and that's about it. Like, it's not giving me a huge amount of information. So I'm just gonna move on to the next hive now. And again, Just, I'm just not getting enough information out of it. Like, I don't know whether that's that there's bees in there, although I do know there's bees in there, but I don't know whether through just looking at the infrared images that are coming through whether there's bees in there. And like I say, if I go away and you see this image here, like, everything works. This works really well. And I think the problem is, is it's not giving me the temperature differential that's like clearly evident on my hand there, it's not giving me it on the beehive. So the bees aren't making a big enough difference to that beehive to show up on this sensor, and I think that's the reason that it's giving me these really poor images. So again, do you know what I mean? You can see, yeah, there's bees in there, but it might just be the Like, you can see a couple of hot spots there. If I move this, you'll see that's where the sun is, so it's picking up those hot spots. So I'll go and show you in a second. I've got a box that's empty and I'm getting a really similar footprint to what's actually on here. So I just can't trust the data and I'm not sure that this is going to be any use to me at all. So these 2 hives here, the Eyelicious one on the left is full of bees, jam-packed full of bees, and the one on the right is just empty boxes. But they've actually been in the sun. So let's have a look at the differences between these 2 boxes. I was expecting to see a real dramatic difference. The one on the left, full, jam-packed full of bees, and the one on the right, not so jam-packed full of bees. Let's see if there's a difference. I'd say that's fairly inconclusive. Although, do you know what I mean, it's the one on the left is showing a greater heat footprint, I would say. But both of them, do you know what I mean, they're relatively pink. They're showing the hot spots where the sun has been kind of baking onto the poly or the wood. It's not giving me anything worth kind of analyzing. It's basically saying there might be something in both of the boxes, and I don't think that's acceptable for, for what I need to use this for. I really don't think this is a suitable product for kind of analyzing what's in the beehives. Now if you go over to that one a little bit on the left, JG Plastics. Wow, looks like something big's going on there. What can we see it is? And it's just the hive in the sun. So it's really not working very well for me at the moment. Now this is really interesting. So I've taken a A lid off here, and you can see some bees just kind of over here on the left-hand side. Now what I want to do is see whether if I'm getting closer into the colony, I can see kind of any footprint whatsoever. So when I put my thing on there now, I'm seeing a real clear heat footprint there, and that's showing that the bees are on the left-hand side. You can see them kind of accessing up the feeder there. So that's really interesting. Like, I take the roof off here and you can actually see a pretty decent foot— a heat footprint within the hive. Now, this kind of isn't what I expected, and it's not really what I wanted to use it for. I definitely didn't want to have to start taking the hive apart to see a heat footprint. But you really can see the difference there. Like, it looks like the bees are much more clustered to the left-hand side, so kind of over there. And then they are on the right-hand side. This corner specifically down here, not much action there at all. It'd be really interesting to kind of open these guys up and see whether that kind of actually matches where the bees are. I'm not going to do that because it is pretty cold here today and I really don't want to disturb the propolis seals that are there. But interesting to see, don't you mean? You take the roof off and you do get a much, much better reading. I'd be very confident to say that there were bees in this hive. So let me go and see another, if I can find another hive that doesn't have bees in but does have a feeder on, and I think I found one, and we'll go and see if we can see a difference in that heat footprint. Right, so this hive here, this is just an empty hive. It's one of my drone laying queens earlier in the year. Complete dud, nothing in it, completely empty. Got a few wasps kind of getting in and getting the remnants of that feed there, so I really should clear it out. But let's see if there's a difference with the heat footprint that's showing on it now. And there really is, like, that, that's really interesting, do you know what I mean? I've got the warmth there, which is clearly where that wood's been baking in the sun, but then if you look at the heat footprint there, it's nowhere near as pronounced. Get a closer image for you. Nowhere near as pronounced as it was on the other one. So it, I mean, it is registering that heat, but I just don't think it's doing it very well. Our final one, let's have a quick look at this kind of Swienty hive straight ahead of us. This is the biggest hive in the whole apiary here. This is absolutely full to the brim, really heavy with stores. If any of the hives here are going to give me a really good reading as to kind of showing a heat footprint or a heat map, This is the one. So I'm expecting to see really warm across the board. And yeah, you know what I mean? We can we can see that it's warm, but is it that much warmer than the one that's sitting next door to it? No, and that one's empty. So I mean, the one on the left got no bees in it, the one on the right full of bees, and they just look the same. So there you have it, that's the review of my FLIR Gen 3 infrared module for the Android phone. And would I recommend it for any beekeepers? Definitely not. I think it's a really badly designed product for beekeeping. Now that's not to say that it's a really, really badly designed product at all. Like, you saw the pictures of my hand, it picks up the heat really well. I think for areas, maybe kind of like plumbers, where you're looking to see where heat sources are and you've got a really big heat differential, so you've got, say, hot water pipes running through a cold wall, I think that would pick that up really well. Where you've got bees operating at maybe kind of 38°C inside some insulation like poly material, and you're trying to get a reading from the outside of that poly material to see that they're there, it's just not good enough. It just doesn't pick up the heat as much as I need it to. Now it'd be really interesting to see if we come back Maybe kind of like on a, a 2 or 3 degree day where it's not getting that radiation from the sun and the surrounding temperature is considerably colder than it is today. It'd be interesting to see whether you can pick up the differences then, but I need this to kind of be able to show me that from October through to February and March. I need to be able to see that difference if it's going to be a useful tool. Now don't get me wrong, you do not need this tool. This is very much a luxury item, and if it worked, I would have said that anyway. I would have said, don't— I mean, don't rush out to buy it. It's a bit of a gizmo, a bit of a gadget, a bit of something different. I do, however, think if you could get a really good quality infrared camera— and I've seen some of them, I mean, they're upwards of kind of like 10, 15 grand— I think, I mean, if you could get that cost down to say £500 or £600 and it was reliable, I do think for people who work on a much larger scale, it's potentially a tool that you could add to their arsenal just to weed out the, the dud colonies kind of later on in the season. Because you'd see the big ones that had a big cluster of bees, and then you'd see the kind of smaller ones that were potentially dwindling or where there was potentially an issue. And then you could go in and take action later on in the season, and then that would resolve the issue. So I really would like to persevere with this and see if we can find a solution. But I have to say, this is definitely not the solution. It's really not offering me the kind of functionality that I need to be able to see inside beehives during the colder months of the year. So I hope you've enjoyed this video, something a little bit different from the videos that we normally produce. I love my tech, so I'm going to continue to kind of look at different technologies, do the reviews add them up for you to see. I'll always give you my frank and honest opinion. I'm not going to try and kind of sell you something that I don't think is worthwhile, even if that object or that piece of material is provided to us for free by the manufacturer or by Amazon or any of those kind of people. This one, I paid for it with my own money, and I really cannot recommend it at all. I don't think it's a good tool for beekeepers. So as always, thanks for watching. Please hit the subscribe button. Please hit the bell so you're notified of every video, and I'll see you next time. Bye.
