Mailing list for the Person County Beekeepers Association, Roxboro, NC

[Mary Deitz <mdeitz625 AT gmail.com>]

FYI

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: SwarmPatrol <info AT swarmpatrol.com>
Date: Thu, Feb 6, 2014 at 8:18 PM
Subject: Register on Swarmpatrol.com - for swarm collection and sales - Bee Assoc Officeholder
To: mdeitz625 AT gmail.com

 

Dear Bee Association Officeholder,

We would like to inform you about a newly launched state-of-the-art website – especially designed to help beekeepers collect swarms in their specified local area, as well as enabling the sale of bee related products.

www.swarmpatrol.com  was born out of the need for prompt communication of the existence of a swarm, and its need for prompt collection. Having been a hobby beekeeper for many years, and only in the past 2 years involved in swarm collection, I saw that the process could be streamlined – utilising the latest GPS and mobile technologies. 'Beeing' involved in the IT industry, I set out to build just such a site.

Please register on the site and have a good look at its capabilities and potential. It does not cost anything, and does not put the registering person under any obligation to collect swarms. A registration as a beekeeper, simply interested in selling honey or other bee related products, is also allowed. 

So how does the website work, and what is special about it?

A member of the general public uses www.swarmpatrol.com to register a swarm for collection, and provides its detailed address. The system captures its GPS coordinates.  It instantly compares the swarm location with the location of beekeepers on its database, and sends a text message to the closest 3 who have registered that they are prepared to travel the distance. They, in turn, contact the person reporting the swarm and arrange to remove it. The reason for choosing 3 is to allow for people being out of cell phone range, on holidays, or simply not available. This way, hopefully there will be one 'Beek' who can collect the swarm. After removal, the beekeeper can mark the swarm as collected. All swarm notifications remain in the beekeeper’s own profile and we keep various statistics which in due time will be available as reports to members.

We hope that after a couple of years we will have some valuable data on the website which can point to feral colonies, or badly managed apiaries, and in time the site might be enhanced for disease and parasite tracking.

We realise that many of the bee associations have swarm collection lists, and manage swarms very well, but we do encourage you to have a look at www.swarmpatrol.com and see if it can provide an additional tool. If so, please promote it among your members, and the local community! While substantial resources have been spent by my company for the SwarmPatrol development, the site is a not-for-profit site with valuable community benefits!

We look forward to you and many of your members joining the site and promoting it within your local areas to the general public, local councils and all types of media. If you need any additional information about the site please do not hesitate to contact us on info AT swarmpatrol.com or by clicking the Feedback link on the website's menu.

Please note that we are making this one time only contact by email to let you know about the existence of SwarmPatrol. We won't add you to a mailing list and send you further emails on a regular basis.

Best wishes
Andrew Guzowski
SwarmPatrol Team
www.swarmpatrol.com