Honey bee counter evaluation – Introducing a novel protocol for measuring daily loss accuracy

Borlinghaus, Parzival; Odemer, Richard; Tausch, Frederic; Schmidt, Katharina; Grothe, Oliver

doi:10.1016/j.compag.2022.106957

Cited by 10 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Although the Eyesonhives technology is likely impractical and expensive for use in large-scale pollination or honey production, the findings of this study indicate that there may be value in monitoring even a few colonies between different sites, as sentinel colonies, for the remote and rapid detection of important events, such as colony collapse resulting from communicable diseases or acute pesticide exposure. Recently, other inexpensive monitoring devices and protocols have been developed and reported to detect activity for exactly this purpose [ 55 , 56 , 57 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Precision Monitoring of Honey Bee (Hymenoptera: Apidae) Activity and Pollen Diversity during Pollination to Evaluate Colony Health

McKinnon

Collins

Wood

et al. 2023

Insects

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Certain crops depend upon pollination services for fruit set, and, of these, almonds are of high value for Australia. Stressors, such as diseases, parasites, pesticides, and nutrition, can contribute to honey bee Apis mellifera L. colony decline, thereby reducing bee activity and pollination efficiency. In Australia, field studies are required to monitor honey bee health and to ascertain whether factors associated with colony decline are impacting hives. We monitored honey bee colonies during and after pollination services of almond. Video surveillance technology was used to quantify bee activity, and bee-collected pollen was periodically tested for pesticide residues. Plant species diversity was also assessed using DNA metabarcoding of the pollen. Results showed that bee activity increased in almond but not in bushland. Residues detected included four fungicides, although the quantities were of low risk of oral toxicity to bees. Floral diversity was lower in the pollen collected by bees from almonds compared to bushland. However, diversity was higher at the onset and conclusion of the almond bloom, suggesting that bees foraged more widely when availability was low. Our findings suggest that commercial almond orchards may sustain healthier bee colonies compared to bushland in early spring, although the magnitude of the benefit is likely landscape-dependent.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Precision Monitoring of Honey Bee (Hymenoptera: Apidae) Activity and Pollen Diversity during Pollination to Evaluate Colony Health

McKinnon

Collins

Wood

et al. 2023

Insects

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“…The following specifications of Struye et al (1991) still apply to modern counters: (a) monitoring of all colony sizes, (b) no interference with normal bee behaviour, (c) ventilation and orientation behaviour should not be affected, (d) fully autonomous operation under field conditions, (e) user-friendly and low-maintenance design, (f) affordable enough to monitor more than one colony, and (g) low energy consumption to allow continuous operation. In addition, counters must record (h) reproducible data that can be easily extracted, and, (i) allow a robust validation of the counter error which is required to achieve reproducible results (Borlinghaus et al, 2022;Odemer, 2022). Without these last two points, use in the context of good laboratory practice (GLP), which is a prerequisite for pesticide risk assessment, would not be possible (Tausch et al, 2022).…”

Section: The Path Forwardmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making way for the implementation of automated bee counters in regulatory risk assessment

Odemer,

Jakoby,

Barth

et al. 2024

J Applied Entomology

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Measuring adverse effects on honey bees and their colonies requires a suitable methodology. For example, due to the large number of bees in a hive and the foraging activity, measuring the mortality of individuals is a difficult task that has not yet been adequately addressed. Knowing the natural daily mortality rate of a bee colony would be of great benefit in assessing whether and to what extent external influences and stress factors affect mortality. More precise mortality data could in turn help refining specific protection goals for regulatory purpose. The European Food Safety Authority recently published a document that estimated such mortality rates based on a systematic literature review, but none of these rates were assessed from continuous monitoring of colonies. Currently, bee mortality is routinely evaluated with various types of dead bee traps that prevent deceased bees from being removed from the colony. Both the literature review and the dead bee traps are relevant to regulatory risk assessment, but in our opinion are not describing the total mortality. Bee counters capable of precisely determining daily loss rates meet the above points and combine them with generating automated and continuous monitoring data. Lately, the field has gained a lot of importance in research and technological advances offer new possibilities in regulatory risk assessment. We will highlight these possibilities and discuss their future application in practice.

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“…For comprehensive surveys on sensors as applied to beekeeping see [ 9 , 10 ] and the references therein. All these questions above and many more are not currently faced by standard, commercial solutions and different research directions involving gas sensors [ 11 , 12 , 13 ], audio or vibrations [ 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 ], new communication protocols [ 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 ], doppler radar in the hive entrance [ 23 ], bee counters [ 24 , 25 , 26 ] and energy harvesting techniques [ 27 ] try to offer new useful services but have to persuade the beehive manager that the extra cost is justified.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Low-Cost, Low-Power, Multisensory Device and Multivariable Time Series Prediction for Beehive Health Monitoring

Rigakis

Potamitis

Tatlas

et al. 2023

Sensors

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We present a custom platform that integrates data from several sensors measuring synchronously different variables of the beehive and wirelessly transmits all measurements to a cloud server. There is a rich literature on beehive monitoring. The choice of our work is not to use ready platforms such as Arduino and Raspberry Pi and to present a low cost and power solution for long term monitoring. We integrate sensors that are not limited to the typical toolbox of beehive monitoring such as gas, vibrations and bee counters. The synchronous sampling of all sensors every 5 minutes allows us to form a multivariable time series that serves in two ways: (a) it provides immediate alerting in case a measurement exceeds predefined boundaries that are known to characterize a healthy beehive, and (b) based on historical data predict future levels that are correlated with hive’s health. Finally, we demonstrate the benefit of using additional regressors in the prediction of the variables of interest. The database, the code and a video of the vibrational activity of two months are made open to the interested readers.

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Honey bee counter evaluation – Introducing a novel protocol for measuring daily loss accuracy

Cited by 10 publications

References 28 publications

Precision Monitoring of Honey Bee (Hymenoptera: Apidae) Activity and Pollen Diversity during Pollination to Evaluate Colony Health

Precision Monitoring of Honey Bee (Hymenoptera: Apidae) Activity and Pollen Diversity during Pollination to Evaluate Colony Health

Making way for the implementation of automated bee counters in regulatory risk assessment

A Low-Cost, Low-Power, Multisensory Device and Multivariable Time Series Prediction for Beehive Health Monitoring

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