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

I-Corps项目的广泛影响/商业潜力将为商业养蜂人提供一种远程实时监控和识别需要管理的蜂群的方法，而不管位置如何，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来确定哪些蜂群需要实地协助。对于商业迁徙养蜂人来说，这种做法尤其耗费资源，他们经常将蜜蜂转移到其他地方，为美国农民提供授粉服务。此外，这种拟议的方法将允许衡量各种农业景观对蜜蜂群体健康的影响，使农民能够与农民进行基于量化的讨论，讨论授粉者友好的最佳做法。最终，这个i作物项目的重点是利用蜜蜂的经济重要性，在农业景观中为传粉者友好的耕作实践创造财政奖励。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，以及群体所在的景观如何对群体整体健康做出贡献。这是可能的，通过持续监测内部蜂群环境，当蜂群健康时，这种环境受到严格的调节和稳定，并利用远程低功率通信基础设施。当一个蜂群不健康或遭遇不利事件时，如失去女王，蜂群的内部环境就会被破坏。蜜蜂种群最近经历了大量的年度损失，尽管已经对居住在后院或大学研究基地的蜜蜂进行了大量研究，但没有工作(除了有限的流行媒体采访)试图记录商业迁徙蜂主及其蜜蜂在其年度授粉周期中面临的经济和生物学问题。除了为美国农业生产的一个重要组成部分提供优化和后勤支持外，对这些商业殖民地的远程监测将为这群经济关键昆虫的内部生活提供亟需的洞察。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.