In some countries, including the United States, farmers have lost 42% of their honey bee population within the previous year. That should help pinpoint threats to the creatures, which are responsible for pollinating about a third of the world’s food crops. Their free service of pollination plants is in danger as bee populations have crashed. The sensors are no bigger than grains of rice and will serve as e-tags that will track the bees’ movements in and out of the beehive, transmitting information back to the researchers, The Australian reported.
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He added that by tracking and electronically modeling the bees’ movements, researchers can help “identify the causes of stress in order to protect the important pollinating work honey bees do”.
A new global initiative launched this week will outfit thousands of bees with a device that can help explain why their population are beginning to be wiped out around the world.
The Global Initiative for Honey Bee Health is studying colony collapse disorder (CCD), which involves a colony suddenly losing most of its worker bees, and Varroa mites, a parasite that attacks bees.
“We’re also investigating what key factors, or combination of factors, lead to bee deaths on mass. The sensors, working in partnership with Intel software, operate in a similar way to an aeroplane’s black box flight recorder in that they provide us with vital information about what stress factors impact bee health”. CSIRO are calling on those with the specialist skills and knowledge to contribute in the effort to save honey bees.
Dr Saul Cunningham, a CSIRO pollination researcher, says that Australia is lucky to have not been impacted by the Varroa mite so far.
Bees in the U.S. and Australia are not as aggressive and this technique works, but in Brazil, researchers must but the bees in the refrigerator were they fall asleep and then they can be outfitted with their micro-sensors.
“This puts Australia in a good position to act as a control group for research on this major issue that could one day become our problem too”, said Cunningham.
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The little “backpacks” will gently be attached with tweezers, weighing a mere 5.4 milligrams (which is 0.0002 ounces), which is actually lighter than the pollen a bee can collect. It will be stamp sized, square, at 2.5 millimeters each side (which is approximately 0.1 inches). It records time period from which the bee is away from the hive and the distance each bee has travelled.
