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Automated entrance monitoring of managed bumble bees

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Abstract

Social pollinators are a critical part of both natural and agricultural ecosystems, and a great source of inspiration for engineered swarms. Recently, researchers have produced a range of systems for automated monitoring of honey bee entrances to further insights on e.g. collective foraging, labor distribution, and suppression of disease transmission. In this article, we detail the design of a system customized for capturing top and side view photos of bumble bees as they enter and exit their hives. We show how these photos can be used to automatically track foraging activity, identify individuals, and characterize bee size and pollen presence. To aid technology adoption by biologists, our design is specifically optimized for low cost and easy fabrication, operation, and maintenance. Over two iterations, the entrance has been used on 8 hives in greenhouse and field over 10 weeks.

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Acknowledgements

The work was funded by the National Science Foundation and the United States Department of Agriculture Grants #1739671 and #137536, a Research Innitiative Funding grant from the Cornell Institute for Digital Agriculture 2019, and a Cornell Engineering Learning Initiatives Grant. The authors would also like to thank Marta Kimmel, Timothy Salazar, and Phoebe Koenig for their early contributions to this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14853, USA

    Jingwen Du, Nils Napp & Kirstin Petersen

  2. Mechanical Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14853, USA

    Zach Brothers

  3. Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14853, USA

    Leah Valdes

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  1. Jingwen Du
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  2. Zach Brothers
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  3. Leah Valdes
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  4. Nils Napp
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  5. Kirstin Petersen
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Correspondence to Kirstin Petersen.

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This work was presented in part at the joint symposium with the 15th International Symposium on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems 2021 and the 4th International Symposium on Swarm Behavior and Bio-Inspired Robotics 2021 (Online, June1–4, 2021.

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Du, J., Brothers, Z., Valdes, L. et al. Automated entrance monitoring of managed bumble bees. Artif Life Robotics 27, 278–285 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10015-022-00748-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10015-022-00748-9

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