What is it like to be a bee? These tiny QR tracking tags helped science find out

In rural Pennsylvania and New York, researchers have attached tiny QR codes to hundreds of honey bees in an effort to track the insects’ foraging habits. 

This innovative approach, developed by a team of entomologists and electrical engineers at the Pennsylvania State University, aims to unravel the mystery of how far bees travel to collect pollen and nectar. 

The study marks a significant leap in understanding honey bee ecology and could have implications for organic beekeeping practices.

“This technology is opening up opportunities for biologists to study systems in ways that weren’t previously possible, especially in relation to organic beekeeping,” said Margarita López-Uribe, an associate professor of entomology at Penn State.

New era in bee monitoring

The QR codes, known as fiduciary tags, are attached to the bees’ backs without harming them. These tags, combined with a custom-built imaging system, allow researchers to track the bees as they leave and return to their hives. 

The system records critical data, including each bee’s unique ID, the time and date of its movements, direction, and environmental factors such as temperature.

“In field biology, we usually just look at things with our eyes, but the number of observations we can make as humans will never scale up to what a machine can do,” López-Uribe explained.

The data collected from this automated system offers far greater precision and scalability than traditional methods, which rely on visual observations.

Challenges in organic beekeeping

Organic beekeeping requires keeping hives free from synthetic chemicals and situating them away from polluted areas.

However, honey bees’ capacity to fly long distances – up to 10 kilometers – complicates the enforcement of these standards. 

The team hypothesized that bees typically forage much closer to their hives, often within one kilometer. This study could refine our understanding of these ranges and influence organic certification standards.

“The waggle dance is the best source of information that we have about bee foraging, but that’s based on human observations, with maybe an hour of observations made once a day over two weeks,” López-Uribe said. 

“The goal is to understand if that 10-kilometer estimation is biologically accurate. Can we determine exactly how far honey bees travel from their hives?”

How the study was done

To achieve this, the entomologists partnered with electrical engineers to design a cost-effective and solar-powered tracking system.

Study co-author Julio Urbina, a professor of electrical engineering, emphasized the importance of cross-disciplinary collaboration in the project.

“There wasn’t anything available like this before,” Urbina said. “This paper is the first step moving forward in the right direction, with opportunities to do more – in large part because of the growing synergy across our teams.”

The collaboration required both teams to step out of their comfort zones. Engineers learned to handle and monitor bees in the field, while entomologists explored the intricacies of designing automated technology.

Bee monitoring systems of the future

“Systems built in the past to monitor bees were developed to run in or near controlled laboratory environments,” said Diego Penaloza-Aponte, a doctoral student in electrical engineering and co-corresponding author on the study. 

“Our goal was to develop something that could run in a rural environment, away from the lab, on solar power and to make everything open source. Anyone can use this system and modify it.”

The result was a system that cost under $1,500 per apiary, which includes monitoring equipment for six colonies.

Bee foraging secrets discovered

Over a single season, the researchers tagged more than 32,000 bees, monitoring them continuously using the automated system.

Each bee’s activity was logged, offering unprecedented insights into their foraging behavior.

“We targeted young bees so we could track their age more accurately, especially when they start to fly and when they stop,” said Robyn Underwood, Penn State Extension educator in apiculture. 

“Once the bee was old enough to fly, it would leave the colony and be seen under the camera. In real time, our sensor would read the QR code and capture the bee ID, date, time, direction of movement – leaving or entering the hive – and the temperature.”

Most trips outside the hive lasted between one and four minutes, which might involve checking the weather or defecating. 

Longer trips, typically under 20 minutes, involved foraging. Interestingly, about 34% of bees spent more than two hours away from the hive, possibly due to extended foraging trips or failure to return.

“We also found that bees are foraging for a lot longer over their lifetimes than initially thought,” Underwood said. 

“We’re seeing bees foraging for six weeks, and they don’t start foraging until they are already about two weeks old, so they live a lot longer than we thought.”

Loitering and waggle dancing

The system’s precision revealed unexpected challenges, such as bees loitering near hive entrances and being detected multiple times. 

“Turns out, some bees just like hanging out in the entrance, and the camera will read them every time they walk by,” Penaloza-Aponte said.

“That’s why the programming is so handy. It can cut that outlier data and help make sure we’re tracking what’s actually meaningful.”

The researchers are now collaborating with experts at Virginia Tech to compare their foraging data with decoded waggle dances.

They also plan to expand the study to track other bee species and specific hive members, such as drones and queens.

Better understanding of bee ecology

According to the experts, this system is a game-changer for understanding honey bee behavior.

It combines technology and biology in a way that scales up what we can learn and opens the door for discoveries that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.

By making their system open source and cost-effective, the team hopes to empower scientists and beekeepers to explore new frontiers in bee research and conservation, ensuring the survival of these essential pollinators in a rapidly changing world.

Image Credit: Provided by Margarita López-Uribe, Robyn Underwood, Julio Urbina, Diego Penaloza-Aponte and team

—–

Like what you read? Subscribe to our newsletter for engaging articles, exclusive content, and the latest updates.

Check us out on EarthSnap, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

—–