Detecting varroosis using a gas sensor system as a way to face the environmental threat

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) is an environmental threat on a global scale due to the irreplaceable role of bees in crop pollination. Varroa destructor (V.d.), a parasite that attacks honeybee colonies, is one of the primary causes of honey bee population decline and the most serious threat to the beekeeping sector. This work demonstrates the possibility of quantitatively determining bee colony infestation by V.d. using gas sensing. The results are based on analysing the experimental data acquired for eighteen bee colonies in field conditions. Their infestation rate was in the 0 to 24.76% range. The experimental data consisted of measurements of beehive air with a semiconductor gas sensor array and the results of bee colony V.d. infestation assessment using a flotation method. The two kinds of data were collected in parallel. Partial Least Square regression was applied to identify the relationship between the highly multivariate measurement data provided by the gas sensor array and the V.d. infestation rate. The quality of the developed quantitative models was very high, as demonstrated by the coefficient of determination exceeding R² = 0.99. Moreover, the prediction error was <0.6% for V.d. infestation rate predictions based on the measurement data that was unknown to the model. The presented work has considerable novelty. To our knowledge, the ability to determine the V.d. infestation rate of bee colony quantitatively based on beehive air measurements using a semiconductor gas sensor array has not been previously demonstrated.