System design for inferring colony-level pollination activity through miniature bee-mounted sensors.

ABSTRACT: In digital agriculture, large-scale data acquisition and analysis can improve farm management by allowing growers to constantly monitor the state of a field. Deploying large autonomous robot teams to navigate and monitor cluttered environments, however, is difficult and costly. Here, we present methods that would allow us to leverage managed colonies of honey bees equipped with miniature flight recorders to monitor orchard pollination activity. Tracking honey bee flights can inform estimates of crop pollination, allowing growers to improve yield and resource allocation. Honey bees are adept at maneuvering complex environments and collectively pool information about nectar and pollen sources through thousands of daily flights. Additionally, colonies are present in orchards before and during

SUBMITTER: Abdel-Raziq HM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7895963 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature