Development of monitoring technology to establish the nutritional state and health of domesticated honeybee colonies

With wild pollinator populations in decline, industrial agriculture depends on commercial honeybee pollination. Honeybees are already under pressure from parasites, pesticides and predators like the Asian Hornet, and when deployed in monocrop settings these stressors can be compounded by a lack of nutritional variety. Combined with unforeseen pollen or nectar dearths, food stress can be a major contributor to colony failure, creating a need
for supplemental feeding. When commercial beekeepers may oversee thousands of colonies, knowing which of them need to be fed can save a lot of time. Our aim is to identify measurable signs that a honeybee colony is starting to starve or is suffering from malnutrition.
We will study the effects of starvation and malnutrition on individual bees, small groups of bees, and whole colonies using hive monitoring equipment provided by our industrial partner BeeHero in conjunction with independent sensors, measuring temperature, humidity, in-hive sound, foraging activity and other parameters. We will analyse this data using machine learning and time series approaches to identify signatures of nutritional state in
these colony parameters, which can warn a beekeeper in time to provide supplemental feed.

BBSRC priority areas Welfare of managed animals; Data driven biology
DTP priority areas Industrial Biotechnology and Bioenergy; Agriculture and Food
Security.