Saturday, February 8, 2025

What’s All of the Buzz About?




Only a few years again, fixed reporting on colony collapse dysfunction had the world questioning if honey bees have been on the verge of turning into an endangered species — or possibly even worse. However now, simply a short while later, the image appears to be like a lot better for our flying buddies. There undoubtedly are a variety of opinions on the matter, however the numbers do appear to indicate that bees are on the rebound in a giant method.

That’s nice information, however it’s also a reminder simply how essential bees are to us and the setting. With out bees, lots of the crops we depend on for meals would battle to thrive, as these industrious pollinators are chargeable for fertilizing vegetation that produce fruits, greens, nuts, and seeds. Past agriculture, bees additionally play an important function in sustaining biodiversity, supporting ecosystems by pollinating wild vegetation that function meals and habitat for numerous different species.

Given their significance to us, it is sensible that we might need to do what we will to make sure the well being of honey bee populations. The pure first step in creating a method to bolster bee populations would contain amassing knowledge. In spite of everything, should you have no idea the character of the issue you might be coping with (or if there’s a downside in any respect!), it will be very tough to unravel. It is because of this {that a} workforce of researchers at Penn State College developed a novel bee monitoring system that makes it doable to know their conduct in a method that was beforehand unimaginable.

The workforce, in collaboration with electrical engineers and entomologists, devised a technique to trace bees utilizing QR codes generally known as AprilTags. These tags, smaller than an individual’s pinky nail, are glued to the backs of particular person bees and scanned through an automatic imaging system because the bees enter and exit their hives. This technique offers exact knowledge on foraging patterns, together with journey period, frequency, and environmental circumstances throughout every outing.

The system is powered by a community of six Raspberry Pi 4 single-board computer systems, every outfitted with a Raspberry Pi Digicam Module 3 and strategically positioned at hive entrances inside a 10-meter radius. These computer systems use Wi-Fi to wirelessly talk with each other. The ability setup features a 12-volt Lithium Iron Phosphate battery with a 100 Ah capability, which is saved charged by a 195-watt monocrystalline photo voltaic panel.

Every tag is a part of a custom-designed 44h12 AprilTag household, which encodes 44 knowledge bits and offers a novel ID for over 6,000 bees. To make sure sturdiness and dependable detection, the tags are printed on matte sticker paper, coated with acrylic sealer to forestall scratches, and hooked up utilizing pure shellac glue to reduce interference with the bees’ flight. The tags are learn by Raspberry Pi cameras mounted at hive entrances, which use AprilTag detection software program to decode the IDs and seize positional and orientation knowledge from the bees.

In the middle of testing their system, the researchers have found some fascinating findings. Whereas most foraging journeys final mere minutes, some bees can spend over two hours away from their hive — a conduct beforehand unknown. Information collected from 32,000 tagged bees throughout six apiaries present that foraging conduct fluctuates with environmental components, comparable to flower availability. Furthermore, throughout weeks with fewer floral sources, bees are likely to take longer journeys, touring additional to safe satisfactory meals.

The workforce isn’t stopping with honey bees. Plans are underway to adapt the system for different bee species and colony members, together with queens and drones. Moreover, they’re partnering with researchers at Virginia Tech to correlate foraging period with the "waggle dance," a communication technique bees use to convey the placement of meals sources.The AprilTag is used to trace this bee’s exercise (📷: D. Penaloza-Aponte et al.)

An summary of the system (📷: D. Penaloza-Aponte et al.)

The testing setup (📷: D. Penaloza-Aponte et al.)


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