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)

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 as 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.

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

Parasites and Diseases

One of the biggest reasons of the honeybees extinction is a parasite called the Varroa mite. The only place this mite can reproduce is inside a honeybee colony. The mites attach themselves to the bodies of bees and weaken those bees by sucking hemolymph. Hemolymph 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 resistive 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 there queen. The number of CCD occurrences have also seen a drastic rise 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 persistence 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 is one of the most used insecticide 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 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?)

Solution: ?

(solution for the condion problems in beehives)

Models

Prototypes

USE Aspects

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