A novel non-invasive radar to monitor honey bee colony health

Abstract

Honey bees are of vital importance to global crop production. Colony losses have reached historic levels in Europe and North America and are high in other parts of the world. The decline in honey bee health has resulted in the demand for novel mechanisms of monitoring colony health by beekeepers and researchers. Methods of monitoring bee health traditionally involve opening of the hive either for manual data collection or the use of invasive electronic monitors. This study evaluates a beehive activity monitor based on the Doppler radar principle as a tool for assessing honey bee colony health. The research was conducted during a two-year study (2017–2018). We discuss the development of a portable Doppler radar unit and three experiments conducted with the aim of showing its utility in monitoring colony health. First we determined the relationship between: (I) forager activity and colony health (r2 = 0.433, P = 0.006), (II) Doppler unit root mean square (RMS) and forager activity (r2 = 0.766, P = 0.013), and then (III) Doppler unit RMS and colony health measured as total sum of brood and worker population (r2 = 0.731, P = 0.026). This small portable Doppler unit is solar powered and can be deployed in any apiary to provide beekeepers with a tool for tracking their colonies' health in real time.