Multisensor Analysis and Modeling of Honeybee Superorganism Behavior

The BeeBehavours project, in the continuation of SuperBeeLive project (that main outcome is a smart connected hive) aims at reaching a better understanding on a life and death of a hive by taking into account the multilevel aspect of such a structure, from the bee itself to the superorganism that can model the colony’s behavior. This is of real importance since bees are involved in many  aspects  of  their  related  ecosystem,  ecosystem  that  has  been  for  many  years  now  altered  by  several  causes  including climate changes, overuse of pesticides and the Asian hornet.

Technically the project is based on an existing connected hive that has been developed in Montpellier and that makes possible the surveillance of the bees and of the alveoles in real time with the capacity to record all the data in order to permit a retrospective study if necessary. Equipped with cameras (classic, 3D) but also with various type of sensors (microphone, vibration, pressure, etc.) the connected hive is able to produce a large amount of data that will be the basis for a modelling methodology from the hive perspective (and not only the bee itself) and at a multimodal level, with the possibility to detect intrusion or big changes in the homeostasis state of the colony.