Understanding the TGC — Colony General Thermometer

What the TGC is

Every keeper assesses colony health "by eye" — but that judgment lives inside the observer's head: it isn't comparable over time nor easy to teach. The TGC (Colony General Thermometer) fixes this by turning many observations into a single 0–100 score and a reading band (from Excellent to Critical).

The TGC is a common ruler, not a veterinary diagnosis. Its value is consistency: the same measure, the same way, over time.

1. The three tiers

The assessment is organized in three levels:

• Report — the profile you apply, tuned to the colony's context (claustral founding, growth, mature colony, diapause…). It picks which indicators are used and the weight of each one.
• Indicator — a dimension of health (brood and development, feeding, microclimate, population…).
• Sub-indicator — the observable question you actually answer (e.g. are eggs and larvae visible?).

2. How to score

Each sub-indicator is answered quickly with a level:

For precision, use the fine adjustment: an exact value from 0 to 100 that overrides the level.

Answer only what you know and what you can actually observe. You don't have to fill everything in — it's perfectly fine to leave questions blank. A sub-indicator you didn't observe simply doesn't count: the TGC scores with what you answered and reports the coverage (how much of the report you filled in). Prefer leaving it blank over guessing — a guess distorts the reading; a blank question doesn't.

3. How the score is built

The math is a weighted mean: each sub-indicator pulls its indicator's score by its weight; each indicator pulls the final score by its weight in the report. Weighting is the trick — a decisive sign (an active queen) counts more than a secondary detail.

4. The reading bands

The score becomes an easy-to-read band:

5. The critical lock

Some sub-indicators are critical: if a potentially fatal problem (e.g. no hydration, an inactive queen) is in the red, the overall reading is capped at "Alert" at best, even when the average is high. That way a serious risk is never hidden behind a good average.

6. How to use it in AntNotation

1. Open the colony and tap Assess (TGC).
2. Pick the report that fits its stage.
3. Answer the sub-indicators by level (🟢🟡🔴) — only what you know and can observe; leave blank whatever you didn't observe.
4. See the score, band and coverage right away.

Each assessment becomes a dated, immutable record: repeating the TGC week after week draws your colony's health curve.

Tip: always use the same report to compare assessments. The same ruler over time is what reveals whether the colony is improving or asking for attention.

The TGC is an open methodology (CC BY 4.0) — you can clone a report and adapt the weights to your own method. Measure, log, compare! 🐜🌡️