New sensor-based technology has been developed to help commercial bee keepers reduce colony losses due to climate change and disease.
A team from the University of California, Riverside (UCR) say the tech uses low-cost heat sensors and forecasting models to predict when hive temperatures may reach dangerous levels.
PhD student and study lead author Shamima Hossain said the system provided remote beekeepers with early warnings, allowing them to take preventive action before their colonies collapsed during extreme hot or cold weather.
Ms Hossain said it would also be useful when bees could not regulate their hive temperature because of disease, pesticide exposure, food shortages, or other stressors.
“We convert the temperature to a factor that we are calling the health factor, which gives an estimate of how strong the bees are on a scale from zero to one,” she said.
Ms Hossain said the simplified metric, with a score of ‘one’ meaning the bees were at full strength, allowed beekeepers unfamiliar with the underlying model to assess hive health quickly.
UCR Professor of Entomology Boris Baer said the technology could revolutionize beekeeping, which was essential to vast sectors of global agriculture.
Professor Baer said honeybees pollinated more than 80 crops, yet bee populations had declined due to various factors, including habitat loss, pesticide exposure, parasites, and climate change.
“Over the last year, the U.S. lost over 55 percent of its honeybee colonies,” Professor Baer said.
“We are experiencing a major collapse of bee populations, and that is extremely worrying because about one-third of what we eat depends on bees.”
He said beekeepers now relied on their own judgment and manual inspections to detect problems, often leading to delayed interventions.
“With (the new technology) they can get real-time insights and predict conditions days in advance.”
Read the full study: Principled Mining, Forecasting and Monitoring of Honeybee Time Series with EBV+.
