An open-source high-precision hive for long-term honeybee observation and research

Honeybees have been of interest due to their important role in ecology and agriculture. Apis mellifera is a uniquely manageable eusocial insect, defined by its self-organising behaviour, extensive history of domestication and indispensable agricultural role. These attributes, alongside recent high annual losses, necessitate continued scientific research. This research is further accelerated by artificial intelligence and computer vision methods that automatically analyse events in observation hives. However, many findings are not reproducible, even though the methods and models are open source. One of the key problems is the lack of standardisation in the observation-hive setup, leading to significantly different image properties. We present an open-hardware setup design that can be adapted to various research needs and further support the repeatability and transferability of experiments. Using an open-source tracking system, we demonstrate the proposed observation hive on the application of focused observation of an individual honeybee. The hardware designs and software codes are publicly available to the community.