To evaluate honey production, NASA trains interested citizens in techniques such as weighing hives with platform scales.

You could be forgiven for thinking that miners brought canaries into coal mines for a splash of color in an otherwise gray world, or maybe for a bit of song to lighten their days, but, no, that’s not it.  Canaries were in the mines to indicate when a potentially lethal (odorless) gas pocket had been struck, and it was time to climb for cover.  When the whole world is the coal mine, we have to look for “canaries” anywhere we can find them.  That’s one reason NASA is encouraging a citizen-scientist effort to measure honey bee nectar flow.  Because the base of experimenters is so distributed, it’s important to define clear protocols, like this one for measuring nectar weight.  The protocol includes guidelines for weighing with a platform scale.