Tagging 6000 Bees: An Open-source System for Species Monitoring

Did you know that honey bees dance?

When honey bees return to the colony from foraging, they share info about their journey with their fellow honey bees by dancing. Besides getting the boogie on, however, little is known about how far honey bees go foraging and what ecological factors impact their journey, e.g. pesticide exposure.

In this episode of HardwareX, Entomologist Margarita López-Uribe, Ph.D., specialised in bee species, together with Doctoral Student of Electrical Engineering, Diego Penaloza Aponte, of Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences, explain how open-source technologies and collaboration across scientific fields helped pave the way for an automated low-cost monitoring system - and what it takes to tag 6000 bees without getting stung.

To explore the specifics, check out the hardware on HardwareX.

This episode is researched, produced and edited by Miriam Gradel, Journalist and Media Editor at HardwareX. The music is provided by Kammerin Hunt via Pixabay.

HardwareX is a peer-reviewed scientific journal about open-source hardware. For more info, visit HardwareX.