Fecha de publicación: 11/05/2011 Fuente: WIPO "hive" A device (102, fig 1) detects modified behaviour of bees in a local bee hive 312 which may form part of a network of hives. An audio frequency transducer (103, fig 1) generates an audio frequency signal from detected audio and vibrational activity. A transforming device transforms the audio frequency signal into frequency representations and a processing device processes these frequency representations. The audio frequency is preferably transformed by a fast Fourier transform (FFT). The local hive may be provided with a receiving device 314 for receiving signals from the other hives in the network and a transmitting device 313 for sending information to a local collecting station. The frequency representations can be used to detect when swarming is about to occur or whether a particular hive is under threat. The user can be issued a message is such circumstances or an alarm may be raised.