Group Members

Bern Klein Holkenborg 0892107

Marrit Jen Hong Li 0963568

Jorik Mols 0851883

SSA

Look up why bees are dying exactly - Marrit
What are the consequences - Bern
What do bees need to live - Koen
What is the state-of-the-art - Marrit
Investigate USE aspects - Jorik
Make to do list - Bern
Get interviews with beekeepers - Allemaal

What to do for monday: Problem description

- What are the exact problems we try to tackle (Pick 2 problems that we can tackle like winter, mites (and maybe dissentery)
- Consequences of the problem (economic and environmentally)

Our idea to tackle the problems

- Smart beehive for optimal conditions (temperature, moisture, and more?)
- Possibility to sense mites (in breed chamber)
- Possibility to eleminate mites (put chemical in specific breed chambers)

Afspraken 9-5 We zouden een beehive kunnen bouwen, maar dat betekent wel dat we deze week precies moeten weten wat we gaan aanpakken en hoe.

Wageningen professor contacten, vragenlijst klaarmaken:

- Algemeen idee geven aan dr wat we doen/willen doen
- Hoe leven die mijten
- Hoe kunnen we ze het beste detecteren
   - Zitten ze bij elkaar?
   - Hebben ze lievelingsplekjes?
   - Hoe detecteren we of er uberhaupt een larve in een cel zit?
- Wat kunnen we er het beste tegen doen
- Waar houden de bijen hun voedsel?
- Hoe maken we onderscheid tussen verschillende cellen? Broodcel, Voedselopslagcel etc.

In deze trent...

Problemen/Vragenlijst

Contact with a user

To develop a new system such as this electronic beehive, we also need to ask future users for their input. Since beekeepers are most familiar with the actual problems concerning the extinction of bees, we need to find out what they deem to be a proper usable (and practical) solution. Without this knowledge, the final product will become less applicable to the real world problem. It might become too expensive or it might introduce new problems that would otherwise have been pointed out by a future user.

To get a grip on what a beekeeper would want from an electronic beehive, we went to a local beekeeper in Nederwetten. This beekeeper had lost 80% of his honeybee population in the last winter. The main two reasons of this were the shortage of food in the close environment (bees fly up to 3 kilometers away from the hive) and the infections caused by varroa mites. Any beekeeper will be glad if there is a solution for the varroa mites, yet hobbyists will want this solution to be quite cheap, so it is affordable for them. Larger companies that employ honeybees (companies that are hiring beekeepers to move a colony to a desired location) might have a larger budget, but would still want a less costly solution.

The food shortage problem comes from a lot of factors. Farmers in the near vicinity might ruin the soil, such that earthworms will no longer be around. This then causes an error in the food chain, such that birds will also not come near the area. All in all, this leads to less food for the bees, and that is without even mentioning the pesticides used by farmers.

Week 1

The progress of the first week is shown below. The start of the project is described and explained in categories.

Assignments and results

Subject

Bees are little creatures, yet essential to flora and fauna around the globe. Bees are some of the hardest working creatures on the planet, and because of their laborious work ethic, we owe many thanks to this amazing yet often under appreciated insect.

Our lives – and the world as a whole – would be a much different place if bees didn’t exist. To illustrate this fact, consider these numbers: bees are responsible for pollinating about one-sixth of the flowering plant species worldwide and approximately 400 different agricultural types of plant. Thus bees support a large billion euro economy of farmer industry, but more importantly, bees support a wide variety of food for both animals and humans.

However, in recent years, bee population has dramatically dwindled down, mainly because of freezing to death in harsh winters caused by global warming. To indicate the problem: In the last decade, 30% of the bee population in the United States dissappeared already.

In this project, this problem is analysed and a robotic solution like a smart beehive will be investigated.

Objectives

In order to keep bees alive in winter, a system is needed that monitors and acts on the bee colony and it's environment. The main and obvious objective thus is keeping bee colonies alive. However furter objectives have to be set as to specify our goals for this system.

Bees are fragile creatures, this system has to protect them versus an everchanging harsh environment. Information is essential for any smart system so it can act upon the data. The monotoring of a bee colony should be accurate, have a wide range of parameters such as temperature, humidity, bee activity, bee deaths, bee population and honey storage, and most importantly, the monotoring of the bee colony should not interfere with the colonies well-being. Creating such a monotoring system will prove to be challenging but essential, thus making this our first objective.

Secondly, the smart beehive must be able to act upon the information fed to the system via it's sensors. It not only should inform beekeepers on essential data, but should interact with the system itself as well. It should be able to change temperature and humidity. It should be able to control light level and intensity. It should be able to control it's doors. It should maybe even control where the colonies queen is located, or where/how/when how much honey is stored. These actuators have to be designed as to comfort the colony without any possible chance of inflicting damage to the colony and or beekeeper.

As said above, the system should be interactable by human as well. Information must be fed to the beekeeper for optimal beekeeping. This information stream must be desigend and an user-friendly interaction system should be included in the smart beehive.

Optimally, the smart beehive should be modular, as to easily increase or decrease the capacity of the hive as needed by the beekeeper. A compleet smart beehive is to be designed/prototyped and subjected to a series of test by expert and amateur beekeepers. Usability, effectivity, productivity and overall benefit are to be assesed.

Users

The users of this system consists mostly of beekeepers, who are given the responsibility of caring for the bees in the system. On a larger scale, companies might be interested in having a multitude of these systems, so that their employees (eg their own beekeepers) have to maintain them. These two groups are in direct contact with the system, such that the interface of the system is necessary knowledge for those groups.

Users that do not depend on the actual usage (and interface) of the system are for example gardeners or flowerists who want to have a beehive system nearby to aid the pollinating of their flowers. These stakeholders might hire someone to maintain the system for example, such that the purchasing and selling of these systems becomes a separate product or trade. Again, on a larger scale the ruling parts of provinces or countries might be involved with large-scale deployment of these systems, as to ascertain the survival of bees for our future.

Both these user groups have different needs towards such a beehive system.

Direct users want:

The interface to the beehives to be easy to use and understand
The usability of the beehives to be restricted to certain personnel

Owners of a beehive system (owning it for their own purpose but not directly using it) want:

The system to be affordable
The system to be easily placeable, and if possible to be compact

Finally, all users have the common need that the system should be reliable, so that the deployment of these systems helps in the survival of bees to some specified extent.

Approach

Our approach is to define the current problems with keeping bees alive, especially in the winter, and then try to incorporate solutions to these problems in our prototype. Our prototype should be able to be tested, probably by means of simulation. This way we can find out what the effectiveness of our system is at every point in its development.

More concrete, the milestones we will have to reach in the development of our system and in our general approach for this project are:

Creating a way of simulating our design
- This means we have to select some kind of software or maybe even hardware
Being able to collect test results from this simulation efficiently
- Depending on what platform we run tests, this might again be a software issue or a hardware issue
- Also needed here is some place to store test results and maybe visualize them
Improving upon our design such that these test results can be optimized
- For this we need to define parameters that we can optimize

As it says above, we still have to find out if we are going to develop our model of a beehive system by using software or hardware. This will be looked into in the second week. Collection of test results entirely depends on this choice, and thus we will have to figure that out after we know how we will develop our model.

Week 2

The problem is described in more detail, supported by literature. Different methods will be investigated and proposed in order to solve the problems described.

Introduction

Bees are little creatures, yet essential to flora and fauna around the globe. Bees are some of the hardest working creatures on the planet, and because of their laborious work ethic, we owe many thanks to this amazing yet often under appreciated insect.

Our lives – and the world as a whole – would be a much different place if bees didn’t exist. To illustrate this fact, consider these numbers: bees are responsible for pollinating about one-sixth of the flowering plant species worldwide and approximately 400 different agricultural types of plant. Thus bees support a large billion euro economy of farmer industry, but more importantly, bees support a wide variety of food for both animals and humans.

However, in recent years, bee population has dramatically dwindled down. An exact cause is hard to pinpoint, however causes like insecticides, mites, fungi and climate are speculated to be major problems. The real killer however are the relational effects of these problems: Freezing winters kill the fungi and mites severed bee colonies.

To indicate the problem: In the last decade, 30% of the bee population in the United States dissappeared already. Insecticides definetely affect bee population, but this is mostly a political issue. However the mites/fungi/climate problem is a biological issue, which we believe can be tackled with robotics.

In this project smart beehives that operate automatically are introduced and investigated as a possible solution for the colony collapse disease problem.

Possible reasons for declining bee population

For about a decade now beekeepers have been noticing their honeybee population dying off at an unprecedented rate (up to 30 percent per year). This poses a serious problem as bees are the main pollinators of many major fruit and nut crops. In the US only, the loss of honeybee hives is estimated at $2 billion. The question is of course: why?

Their extinction is due to a combination of factors, including insecticides, pathogens, climate change and shrinking habitats. Following below is a short overview of the main reasons as to why the honeybees are facing extinction.

Parasites and Diseases

One of the largest reasons of the honeybees extinction is a parasite called the Varroa mite. The only place this mite can reproduce is inside a honeybee colony. These mites attach themselves to the bodies of bees and weaken those bees by sucking hemolymph. Hemolymph is a sort of fluid that courses through insects’ bodies, analogous to the blood that courses through the veins of humans. The mites will suck the hemolymph from the honeybees, leaving the bees with open wounds. This leaves the bees at a higher risk for infections.

Most colonies of bees are completely defenseless against the Varroa mite. Furthermore the mite is highly resistant to most pesticides.

The Varroa mite has also been associated with the Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). This is a phenomenon where most of the worker bees of a colony disappear and leave behind their queen. The number of CCD occurrences have also seen a drastic increase over the last decade.

There are a lot of other pathogens, in addition to the Varrao mite, that may influence the health of a honeybee. Examples include Nosema, American foulbrood, European foulbrood and chalkbrood.

Take for example American foulbrood. This disease is caused by the spores of the Paenibacillus larvae. Bee larvae are most susceptible to this infection and will become infected by spores present in their food. When other bees try to remove the spore-laden dead larvae, they unknowingly contaminate the rest of the hive. Since the spores are very persistent and can survive to up to 40 years it is fairly difficult to eliminate this disease.

Insecticides

Insecticides, in particular neonics, have also played a role in the decline of bees. Neonics are a class of neuroactive insecticides and are one of the most used insecticides around the world. Neonics however severely affect the honeybees' ability to forage and remembering routes to and from food sources. The use of insecticides has also been linked to CCD.

Poor nutrition

Intensified agriculture and climate change have led to a decreasing amount of food resources for honeybees. This lowers their resistance to diseases and pesticides.

Some pathogens directly influence a bees’ nutrition. For example, the earlier mentioned parasite Nosema competes with the host bees for carbohydrates. This is one of the main nutrients bees need to survive. A mixed pollen diet is much better for a honeybee than a single pollen diet, as it increases their immunity to this kind of infection.

Also, well-nourished honeybees are a lot better at detoxifying pesticides.

Climate change

Climate change has effected bees in a multiple of different ways. For one, climate change affects flowers and their nectar production. This in turn immediately influences the honeybees ability to collect pollen and sustain their hive.

Additionally climate change induces more extreme weather events, such as prolonged drought or increasingly more rain. The flowers in environments experiencing drought may dwindle, while increasing rainy weather might wash away pollen.

Problems identified

Varroa Destructor

The Varroa Destructor mite is one of the larger, if not the largest cause of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). The Varroa Destructorwas originally found only in Asia, but has spread since the twentieth centurty to all parts of the world but Australia. These 2mm long/wide orange colored creatures clamp themselves to bees with their 8 feet and feed on the blood of both young and adult bees.

Varroa Mite

Colonies infested with the mite typically include bees with deformed wings, total paralysis and a destroyed immune system, leaving the bees vulnarible to bacteria and virusses. Colonies collapse due to the mites outproducing the bees, weakening colonies severely to the point of death in winter..

Varroa Destructor's lifecycle

A colony gets infected by Varroa mites by adults mites hitchhiking on the back of worker or drone bees collecting honey or pollen. The Varroa stays on the back of it's host untill it is set for reproduction, or untill it finds another healthier host (which contributes to the spreading of virusses). This stage is called the 'protic' stage, where it only feeds itself. The Varroa is set for reproduction as soon as it can find a bee brood cell of around 5 days old (bee larva live in 'brood' cells). This stage is called the 'reproduction' stage, where the reproduction and growing of age of new mites takes place.

Note that this stage is important for the project, as this stage is very specific and can be used to target and eliminate infected brood cells.

The picture below indicates the reproduction cycle for Varroa mites.

Media:https://articles.extension.org//sites/default/files/styles/large/public/Huang-Fig-1.png

As can be seen in step 3, the mite hides behind the larva in the bee food. It hides untill the workers cap the brood cell with pollen and honey. The Varroa starts feeding on the larva and lays it's first egg 60 hours later. As the larva grows, more eggs get layed (usually around 6) and eventually hatch. The young mites also start feeding and grow into adults. Finally the severely weakened adult bee leaves the cell and with it new mites.

Solution: Targeted Brood Cell Elemination

Whilst many methods of dealing with Varroa mites are already present, none of the existing methods offer a balanced solution. Either the mites die and so do most of the bees, or bees don't die but only a small part of the mites die. A list of methods is given which will not be further clarified but the last one.

Chemical treatment
Genetic Engineering
Perforated bottom board method
Heating method
Drone brood excision method

Varroa mites prefer drone brood cells, as drones take longer to grow which means more reproduction time for the mites. The drone brood excision method uses this fact by deleting all drone brood cells for weeks. Obviously a shortage of drones will be apparent in the colony, but the mites don't have chance to infest the colony when leaving the cell.

The method proposed for the project, is a custom honeycomb with incorperated acidity sensors. As Varroa mites feed on the larvae, they defecate 95% guanine (One of the nucleobases in DNA and RNA!). As both honey and pollen are acid, guanine is a base. If a cell gets sensed as base, the cell should be eliminated since this indicates a Varroa infested brood cell. Besides that the method kills less brooding bees, the method also is more effective in eleminating the mites. The first few mites that enter the beehive only reproduce in such brood cells. These mite 'pioneers' get detected and killed before they reproduce!

The elimation could be done by fire, freezing or chemicals. This can be investigated later in the project.

Hive Conditions

(Temperature) (Humidity) (Light?) (Wind?) (Anything else?)

State of Art solutions and our proposed method

State-of-art

Chemical measures

Now-a-days, most beekeepers control their mite investation by using chemical measures. Apivar, Apistan and Checkmite+ are some popular chemical used in mite control. Discussed is the effectiveness, advantages, disadvantages and considerations of using chemical mite control. As the Varroa mite is a real killer and thus a wide-spread problem for beekeepers, beekeepers usually feel forced to use chemical mite control, knowingly risking severe drawbacks. It is not unreasonable, since chemical treatment has an effect of killing the mite population ranging from 75% up to 99% depending on mite resistance, moment of treatment and chemical used. If chemicals are used on non-resistant mite, generally all mites will die off. Resistant mites usually require specific chemicals to be used during winter when mites (and bees) are most susceptible.

However, with highly effectiveness come major drawbacks. Since the chemicals are often either highly acid, exothermic or poisonous, not only mites get affected. These chemical’s mode of action usually is fumigant or via contact, causing the whole bee population to be affected. Again depending on the chemical used and moment of use, bee colony losses range from 25%-40%. Bees might not be able to overwinter by deformation of wings or food poisoning (as most of the chemicals have a long half-time and get mixed into honey). Bees also tend to leave the hive and die eventually from starvation or freezing. With acid treatment, the beehive also has a chance to be corroded away by the chemical. Finally, a serious weakened queen (or even death of the queen) can be a probable cause of colony death. It should also be noted that chemical treatment often can often only be exercised once or twice a year.

As seen, chemical mite control can be really effective, but comes with a lot and severe consequences. Consequences not only in bee death, but also in quality of bee life. So is there an alternative?

Non-chemical measures

There are non-chemical measures. However these have either a real slim rate of effect or require close manual monitoring and manual actuation.

The most commonly used measure is using a Screen Bottom Board. This method relies on mites falling of bees which randomly happens to mite sometimes, especially in cold hives (thus northern areas). The mites fall through the screen (bees cannot pass through) and fall on a sticky floor from which they can not escape, thus starving eventually. The advantage is that it is a passive method, works all year round and is really good in combination with chemical treatment. However, the rate of effect without chemical treatment only is up to 10%. It also might attract scavengers intruding the hive.

An active method is Drone Brood Removal. Varroa mites prefer drone brood cells for reproduction. Before drone brood cells get capped, a Varroa mite hides in the cell. When the cell gets capped, the mite comes out of hiding and starts feeding on the brood while reproducing itself. This method invokes on the beekeeper remove capped brood cells 2-3 times with an 28 days interval. This gives the mite no chance to reproduce. Effect can be over a 30% better survival rate and is really inexpensive. Although effective, colonies are weakened since there is only a few drones in operation, making the colony susceptible. More problematic is the labor intensive and time consuming process. It is a timely manner to remove and clean all capped drone cells and tricky time management wise to exactly act on a 28 days interval especially when the hives are placed remotely.

A final, effective but tricky method is Requeening. Some species like the East-Russian Primorsky is genetically effective in cleaning hives and eliminating mites (Varroa Sensative Hygiëne (VSH)). The new queen of such a specie produces bees with such property and thus killing the mites. Effectiveness depends on the VSH specie and on the specie that it is introduced to. This method is fairly new, but an exciting heads-up is that the effect when a VSH specie is introduced to Buckfast bees, effectiveness ranges up to 90%. For Caucasian hybrid bees, this is 40%. The tricky part however is to get the new queen introduced to the colony.

But even still, there is no satisfying answer to mite treatment.

Proposed method

Inspired by the Brood Removal Method, a method is introduced to eliminate the time consuming, labor intensive work. A honeycomb automatically removing capped drone brood cells. In fact, this method is already existing: The MiteZapper. The MiteZapper is a honeycomb connected to a 12 volt battery. The MiteZapper shocks the comb with electricity 4-5 times with an 18-23 days interval. The bees then clean the frame since the mites, but also the brood are all dead. When cleaned, new eggs will be layed. Disadvantage is it kills everything touching the frame, whereas preferably it only kills capped brood cells. This is where our technology improves on. Our suggested method is that automatically only capped brood cells get removed, either by electricity, fire, freezing or physical removal (must be further researched and given feedback by beekeepers). Preferably even the removal of only Varroa infected capped brood cells. The problem is detecting an (infected) capped brood cell.

A solution would be to measure pH in all cells. Varroa mites defecate a 95% guanine substance, which is base. Would a cell turn base, the system should identify this as an infected brood cell and thus should act on this. However, measuring all cells for pH would be a problem on its own. Measuring pH is hard and expensive, let aside the tight workspace available. Another problem with measuring pH is that although Varroa mite tend to defecate on the sides of the cell, an exact hit on the sensor might not have a high percent of happening. The sensor could also get covered in brood food, honey or pollen rendering the sensor useless. Another thought of solution would be laser sensing. Honey, pollen and worker brood cells are all capped flat, whereas a drone brood cell gets capped with a high dome. If lasers are placed along the sides of the frontside of the comb, the laser can measure if something is build out of the cell, like a drone brood dome capped cell. It would obstruct the laser for an 8 day period (capping time of a drone). So if a laser is obstructed for a long period of time, it could sense where the capped cell is and the system could now act on it. Downside is that it would kill all drone cells, infected or not.

The best solution would be to be able to detect if a mite has entered the cell, capped or not. A possible solution is that Varroa mites tent to hide in the brood food at the bottom of the cell. If somehow the appearance of a mite in the brood food could be detected automatically, the system can act on the mite and all will be solved. It could even be possible to kill the mite without harming the brood. However, no method is thought of yet to do this.

Models

Requirements

The general idea of our model is that it is a piece of software that simulates the beehive, with introduction and elimination of varroa mites. This model will show us how well our system would help the honey bees survive, based on the hypothesis that we can detect and eliminate individual larvae that are infested with a varroa mite. The requirements are separated into different parts of the software.

GUI:

The model must show the current state of the beehive
The model must show a plotted graph of the state of the beehive from the start of the simulation up to the current point
The model must have a start button, a stop button and a pause button.
The model must show if the bee population in the hive in its current state is sufficient to survive
The model's rate of simulation should be changeable

Modeling:

There must be parameters for:
- The rate at which bees enter the hive
- The rate at which bees leave the hive
- The chance a bee contracts a varroa mite outside of the hive
- The length of a bees' life
- The length of a varroa mite's life
- The rate at which bees lay eggs
- The chance a varroa mite that has entered the hive lays eggs on a larva in a brood cell
- The amount of eggs a single mite can leave
- The chance a bee dying, given that it is an adult and is compromised by a varroa mite
The following things must be modeled:
- The state of a bee, either egg, larva, cocoon or adult
- The state of a cell, either empty, used for storage or used for brooding
- The state of a mite, either on a bee or in a brood cell
- The queen laying different types of eggs

When determining in which cell an egg is laid, as well as in which cell a varroa mite 'jumps' when entering the hive on an adult bee, we pick a cell at random. We do this because we want to abstract from the physical movement of entities in the model (bees and mites). Another design decision is implementing the functionality of cell detection as an interface. This way the software will not depend on the implementation details of this part of the system. Currently we are figuring out if this is possible with pH value detection for example.

We also model the hive to not give birth to queens, and thus not swarming either. Instead the queen will have an infinite lifespan, since the death of a queen is followed immediately by the hive producing an 'emergency' queen, and thus we do not model this occurrence.

First Build

The software model is designed such that the modeling of the hive, drones, workers, queen, mites and cells does not depend on the way the model simulates time. This way the behaviour of individual entities can easily be modified. Time is simulated by means of 'ticks'. Each tick represents a number of hours (this amount can be changed on the gui), and the speed of these ticks (the amount of ticks per second, also changeable on the fly) ranges from 1 tick per second to 10 ticks per second.

Prototypes

Modeled Brood Cell

One way to eliminate the Varrao mite is by combining the perforated bottom broad method with the heating method.

As a prototype a single brood cell is modeled from wood. Holes will be drilled into the bottom to implement the perforated bottom method. Multiple sensors will be hooked up into the cell to check the environment. These sensors include a humidity sensor, a temperature sensor and a pH sensor. The values of the sensors will be fed into an Arduino.

The pH sensor will sense the guanine defecated by the mites. If the pH crosses a certain threshold the Arduino will activate a heating mechanism. This will heat op the the cell to 40 degrees Celsius (the temperature that causes the mites to drop from the bees). This temperature will be kept for a couple of hours before it will drop down again to the original temperature. During this time the weakened mites will fall through the holes drilled into the bottom.

Additional sensors, such as a humidity sensor or a camera, will be used to further monitor the cell.

USE Aspects

User

Direct Users

Our beehive should be able to work without direct supervision of a person. This means that it can be installed somewhere, and that after this installation no direct usage is necessary. The system will instead send information about its current status (as well as the status of its inhabitants) via a data stream to these direct users. This data is then shown in a useful format in some client software that the direct users use.

The direct users will benefit from this client software to be able to show the important points in the data, such as a significant decrease in population, or a large amount of noticed parasites. In other words, the direct user should also be able to understand this visualized data without having professional knowledge of (honey)bees.

Direct users thus mainly have needs concerning this data stream and data visualization.

Society

Since the general problem our system is trying to fix (the dying of bees) is such a big problem for society, the effects our electronic beehive could have on society are similar in size. If these beehives are known to aid the survival of bees, societal parties like the government might employ these hives in large numbers.

This by itself will not create any ethical issues, however, our system is designed to kill off drones if there is a large quantity of varroa mites. This raises the question if it is ethically correct to do so, saving more bees in the progress. Currently the bad treatment of chickens in chicken farms is also a big topic, and if our beehive system would take off and be employed all over the world it might attract some attention to the artificial killing of bees as well.

Enterprise

From a business point of view the system is only worth affording for some company if that company has the need to help its bees survive. For example, florists (that depend on pollination by bees) do not really need such a system. They do want bees to pollinate their flowers, but for this they can hire a beekeeper, which is what mostly happens today. Beekeepers get hired to bring an aptly sized bee colony to a place where they can pollinate agricultural crops.

Thus we find that beekeepers might be interested in an electronic beehive, since they might prefer the ease of use and the lack of needed maintenance that such a system provides. These beehives could then also be shipped to some company that hire the beekeepers for the placement of bees.

As said above, governmental organisations might have an interest in helping bees in nature survive. These organisations might set up some foundation that employs these electronic beehives out in nature.

Project planning

Week 2:

- Give presentation

- Research into the subject, state-of-the-art and USE aspects

- Define a concrete problem

- Brainstorm on potential prototypes

- Contact users we could interview

- Finalize planning and work division