Organic beekeeping researchers at Penn State placed tiny QR codes on the backs of over 32,000 bees in rural Pennsylvania and New York to collect data on their foraging behavior.
Robyn Underwood is an organic beekeeping researcher in the Penn State Department of Entomology. For years, she and other researchers have studied “waggle dances,” a form of physical communication bees use to tell each other about where to find pollen.
“When they see a bee dancing, they can calculate the distance and direction that the bee is literally talking about, like telling their fellow bees,” Underwood said.
Previously, researchers had to watch hours of footage to decode the dances. With this new technology, they are able to capture more data faster. This information helps them measure the bees’ time away from the hive and the direction they are traveling.
“Having this technology allows us to monitor individual bees that each have a name, which in this case is a number that’s encoded on the tag,” Underwood said.
Researchers designed the tags to be 2.5 millimeters in size, small enough to ensure the safety and comfort of the bees. They also decided to attach them to younger bees, which are safer to handle.
In this system, each bee has a unique QR code, which is detected and logged every time they enter and leave the hive. Cameras installed in the tunnels scan them and track this information onto a tiny micro computer they are hooked up to.
“It gave us vast quantities of data compared to seeing some dances behind glass, which is really excellent information,” Underwood said. “But it's a different kind of information.”
The software and hardware for this tracking system were implemented by electrical engineering professor Julio Urbina and doctoral student Diego Penaloza-Apont.
Currently, the National Organic Program requires all the land in a 1.8 mile radius of hives to be certified organic for the honey to be considered organic. Underwood hopes the QR code research will show the bees’ actual forage zone is smaller and reduce the required radius. That would make it easier for honey to be considered organic and help the organic honey industry in the United States.