I-Corps: Remote monitoring of commercial pollination honey bee colonies

这个I-Corps项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力将为商业养蜂人提供一种方法，可以远程监测和识别需要真实的管理的蜜蜂群体，无论地点在哪里，从而减少每年的蜂群损失。目前，商业养蜂人必须依靠时间密集的人工检查，以确定哪些殖民地需要在外地的援助。这种做法对商业迁徙养蜂人来说尤其是资源密集型的，他们经常重新安置蜜蜂，为美国农民提供授粉服务。此外，这种拟议的方法将允许测量各种农业景观对蜜蜂群体健康的影响，使农民能够与农民就授粉者友好的最佳做法进行定量讨论。最终，这个I-Crops项目的重点是利用蜜蜂的经济重要性，为整个农业景观的授粉者友好型农业实践创造经济激励。这个I-Corps项目利用传统的大型数据集分析和机器学习来破译和检测蜜蜂群体内的不利条件，以及蜂群居住的景观如何对蜂群的整体健康做出贡献。这是通过连续监测内部群体环境和利用远程低功率通信基础设施而实现的，当殖民地健康时，内部群体环境被精心地调节和稳定。当一个殖民地不健康或遭受不利事件，如女王的损失，殖民地的内部环境被破坏。蜜蜂种群最近经历了大量的年度损失，尽管对居住在后院或大学研究养蜂场的蜜蜂进行了大量的研究，但没有工作（除了有限的大众媒体采访）试图记录经济和生物问题，商业迁徙养蜂人及其蜜蜂在年度授粉周期中面临的问题。远程监测这些商业殖民地将提供急需的洞察到这一队列的经济上至关重要的昆虫的内心生活，除了提供优化和后勤支持，美国农业生产的一个重要组成部分。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project will supply commercial beekeepers with a way to remotely monitor and identify honey bee colonies in need of management in real time, regardless of location, allowing for a reduction in annual colony loss. Currently, commercial beekeepers must rely on time intensive manual inspections to determine which colonies need assistance in the field. This practice is especially resource intensive for commercial migratory beekeepers who frequently relocate their honey bees to fulfill pollination services for US farmers. In addition, this proposed approach will allow for measuring impact of various agricultural landscapes on honey bee colony health, enabling farmers to engage in quantitative based discussions with farmers about pollinator friendly best practices. Ultimately this I-Crops project focuses on leveraging the economic importance of honey bees to create financial incentives for pollinator friendly farming practices across agricultural landscapes. This I-Corps project leverages traditional large dataset analysis and machine learning to decipher and detect adverse conditions within the honey bee colony, and how the landscapes in which colonies reside contribute to overall colony health. This is possible through continuous monitoring of the internal colony environment, which is meticulously regulated and stable when the colony is healthy, and utilization of long range low power communications infrastructure. When a colony is unhealthy or suffers an adverse event, like the loss of a queen, the colonies internal environment is disrupted. Honey bee populations have experienced large annual losses recently and although substantial research has been conducted on honey bees residing in backyard or university research apiaries, no work (apart from limited popular press interviews) have attempted to document the problems, economic and biological, that commercial migratory beekeepers and their bees face on their annual pollination cycle. Remote monitoring of these commercial colonies will provide much needed insight into the inner lives of this cohort of economically critical insects, in addition to providing optimization and logistical support to an essential component of US agricultural production.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.