The Electronic Bee Spy: Eavesdropping on Honeybee Communication via Electrostatic Field Recordings

Abstract

As a canary in a coalmine warns of dwindling breathable air, the honeybee can indicate the health of an ecosystem. Honeybees are the most important pollinators of fruit-bearing flowers, and share similar ecological niches with many other pollinators; therefore, the health of a honeybee colony can reflect the conditions of a whole ecosystem. The health of a colony may be mirrored in social signals that bees exchange during their sophisticated body movements such as the waggle dance. To observe these changes, we developed an automatic system that records and quantifies social signals under normal beekeeping conditions. Here, we describe the system and report representative cases of normal social behavior in honeybees. Our approach utilizes the fact that honeybee bodies are electrically charged by friction during flight and inside the colony, and thus they emanate characteristic electrostatic fields when they move their bodies. These signals, together with physical measurements inside and outside the colony (temperature, humidity, weight of the hive, and activity at the hive entrance) will allow quantification of normal and detrimental conditions of the whole colony. The information provided instructs how to setup the recording device, how to install it in a normal bee colony, and how to interpret its data.

A Framework for Better Sensor-Based Beehive Health Monitoring

“…Understanding traffic at the hive entrance is a very commonly used proxy for hive health [Tashakkori et al, 2021, Cunha et al, 2020]. Internal hive condition such as temperature [Braga et al, 2020, Seritan et al, 2018, Meikle et al, 2017, Murphy et al, 2016], CO 2 concentration [Seritan et al, 2018,Murphy et al, 2016], humidity [Paffhausen et al, 2021,Murphy et al, 2016], audio [Sharif et al, 2020,Pérez et al, 2016] and weight [Paffhausen et al, 2021,Hladun et al, 2016] have also been used extensively as proxies for hive health. Overwintering colony loss rate [Meikle et al, 2017,Becher et al, 2013, Ngo et al, 2021b] and pathogen infestation rate are also proxies for hive health [Jara et al, 2020].…”

“…Forager workforce size and/or dynamics: Population loss rate [Ngo et al, 2021b]; activity at the hive entrance [Paffhausen et al, 2021]; size of the overwintering colony [Becher et al, 2013]; traffic at the hive entrance [Tashakkori et al, 2021]; bee behaviour at the hive entrance [Schurischuster et al, 2018]; overwintering loss rate [Meikle et al, 2017].…”

“…Hive internal environment: Temperature, humidity, weight [Paffhausen et al, 2021]; temperature and CO 2 concentration [Seritan et al, 2018]; thermal homeostasis [Meikle et al, 2017]; [Szczurek et al, 2019b] provides a list of citations on "physical and chemical conditions" including temperature, humidity, appearance, and weight of the hive as well as notes on gas content, valeric acid, caprylic acid, isocaprylic acid in the context of American foulbrood detection cited from Gochnauer and Shearer (1981) [Gochnauer and Shearer, 1981]; internal temperature and beehive weight [Braga et al, 2020]; humidity, temperature and CO 2 [Murphy et al, 2016].…”

Honey Bees and Industrial Agriculture: What Researchers are Missing, and Why it’s a Problem

“…Here is another way to put that. The ‘canary in the coalmine’ metaphor is commonly employed to warn of the catastrophic consequences of pollinator demise ( Goulson and Nicholls 2016 , Hall and Martins 2020 , Paffhausen et al 2021 ), where honey bees are often (mis-)used as a stand-in for all pollinators ( Geldmann and González-Varo 2018 ). Essentially, the story goes that if honey bees collapse, our food systems will follow.…”

In search of behavioral and brain processes involved in honey bee dance communication

“…These maneuvers consist of a waggle-run phase and a return phase. In the waggle phase, oscillating air jet flows and changes in the electrostatic field caused by wagging movements with wingbeats that are produced by the dancer ( Michelsen, 2003 ; Greggers et al, 2013 ; Paffhausen et al, 2021 ), while hive mates follow the dancer from behind and laterally ( Judd, 1995 ; Rohrseitz and Tautz, 1999 ; Gil and De Marco, 2010 ). Immediately, the dancer continues with a return phase without any wagging movements.…”