Sensorizing a Beehive: A Study on Potential Embedded Solutions for Internal Contactless Monitoring of Bees Activity

Area of Science:

• Agricultural Engineering
• Entomology
• Animal Monitoring Systems

Background:

• Winter poses significant risks to honeybee colonies due to environmental factors and diseases.
• Current beekeeping practices often involve invasive colony checks, potentially harming bees.
• There is a need for non-invasive methods to monitor beehive health and activity.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design and evaluate an instrumented beehive system for contactless, stress-free monitoring of honeybee colonies.
• To assess the feasibility of using internal and bottom-mounted cameras for data acquisition.
• To determine the system's utility in identifying health threats like Varroa destructor mites.

Main Methods:

• Development of an instrumented beehive equipped with internal and bottom-mounted color cameras.
• Description of the system's design choices for effective data acquisition.
• Image analysis using YOLOv8 for detecting mites and assessing colony activity.

Main Results:

• Internal camera placement presents challenges with bee movement and image focus.
• Varroa destructor mites were successfully detected from internal hive images.
• The bottom camera view demonstrated significant potential for monitoring overall colony activity.

Conclusions:

• The proposed instrumented beehive offers a novel approach to contactless bee colony monitoring.
• While internal monitoring is challenging, it can detect specific threats like Varroa mites.
• Bottom-view monitoring provides valuable insights into general colony behavior and health.