Abstract
Up to one third of the global food production depends on the pollination of honey bees, making them vital. This study defines a methodology to create a bee hive health monitoring system through image processing techniques. The approach consists of two models, where one performs the detection of bees in an image and the other classifies the detected bee’s health. The main contribution of the defined methodology is the increased efficacy of the models, whilst maintaining the same efficiency found in the state of the art. Two databases were used to create models based on Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). The best results consist of 95% accuracy for health classification of a bee and 82% accuracy in detecting the presence of bees in an image, higher than those found in the state-of-the-art.
Highlights
IntroductionH ONEY bees (i.e. western honey bees Apis mellifera) are the world’s most frequent pollinators of natural ecosystems, averaging 13% of all floral visits
H ONEY bees are the world’s most frequent pollinators of natural ecosystems, averaging 13% of all floral visits
Comparing the results obtained in the health classification task, it can be stated that the approach defined in this study yielded significantly better results than those obtained in the baseline work [21], which corresponds to the best work available in the literature
Summary
H ONEY bees (i.e. western honey bees Apis mellifera) are the world’s most frequent pollinators of natural ecosystems, averaging 13% of all floral visits. Around 5% of plant species worldwide are exclusively visited by honey bees [1], with 200 economically important plants that require bee pollination for reproduction. Related academic work indicates that crop quality and quantity can be increased by using honey bees to facilitate crop pollination, even in selfpollinating plant species, with some crops’ yields depending 100% on honey bees and other pollinator insects [1], [2]. As stated by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization [3], more than 75% of the world’s food crops rely to some extent on pollination for yield and quality. The European Commission highlights that pollinators provide vital ecosystem services to crops and wild plants, forming a key component of European biodiversity [4]
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