Abstract It has been repeatedly reported that the collective dynamics of social insects exhibit universal emergent properties similar to other complex systems. In this note, we study a previously ...published data set in which the positions of thousands of honeybees in a hive are individually tracked over multiple days. The results show that the hive dynamics exhibit long-range spatial and temporal correlations in the occupancy density fluctuations, despite the characteristic short-range bees’ mutual interactions. The variations in the occupancy unveil a non-monotonic function between density and bees’ flow, reminiscent of the car traffic dynamic near a jamming transition at which the system performance is optimized to achieve the highest possible throughput. Overall, these results suggest that the beehive collective dynamics are self-adjusted towards a point near its optimal density.
Apis cerana forages for around 10 hours/day, starting early in the morning and ending late at night. A study was undertaken in an apiary in Sundarbazar, from March-May 2021 to measure the foraging ...activity. At 8a.m, 11a.m, 1p.m, and 4p.m, number of bees leaving and entering hives with and without pollen for a minute in four different beehives were recorded. According to the observation, there was a significant difference in bee behavior (P0.01) between the time treatments. Pollen-carrying bees entered the hive in greater numbers at 1 p.m, 11 a.m, which was statistically equal to 4 p.m, and least at 8 a.m. Similarly, at 1 p.m., the number of bee leaving and entering the hive without pollen was much greater, followed by 11 a.m. which was statistically equivalent to 4 p.m, and 8 a.m, which had the least. The highest mean value of bee movement was found in May.
Abstract
The influence of the hive’s design and material on the development and productivity of bee colonies have been studied. Reducing the size of honey cases has positively impacted the bee ...family’s development. In this case, it is simpler for bees to develop without honey in the nest and regular expansion of the beehive with honey cases. Based on a detailed 3-year analysis of changes in the structure of beehives, we have found the hive’s optimal structure, which makes it possible to maximize the possibilities of bee colonies in the conditions of the Lipetsk region.
Increasing habitat fragmentation and human population growth in Africa has resulted in an escalation in human-elephant conflict between small-scale farmers and free-ranging African elephants ...(Loxodonta Africana). In 2012 Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) implemented the national 10-year Conservation and Management Strategy for the Elephant in Kenya, which includes an action aimed at testing whether beehive fences can be used to mitigate human-elephant conflict. From 2012 to 2015, we field-tested the efficacy of beehive fences to protect 10 0.4-ha farms next to Tsavo East National Park from elephants. We hung a series of beehives every 10 m around the boundary of each farm plot. The hives were linked with strong wire. After an initial pilot test with 2 farms, the remaining 8 of 10 beehive fences also contained 2-dimensional dummy hives between real beehives to help reduce the cost of the fence. Each trial plot had a neighboring control plot of the same size within the same farm. Of the 131 beehives deployed 88% were occupied at least once during the 3.5-year trial. Two hundred and fifty-three elephants, predominantly 20-45 years old entered the community farming area, typically during the crop-ripening season. Eighty percent of the elephants that approached the trial farms were kept out of the areas protected by the beehive fences, and elephants that broke a fence were in smaller than average groups. Beehive fences not only kept large groups of elephants from invading the farmland plots but the fanners also benefited socially and financially from the sale of 228 kg of elephant-friendly honey. As news of the success of the trial spread, a further 12 farmers requested to join the project, bringing the number of beehive fence protected farms to 22 and beehives to 297. This demonstrates positive adoption of beehive fences as a community mitigation tool. Understanding the response of elephants to the beehive fences, the seasonality of crop raiding and fence breaking, and the willingness of the community to engage with the mitigation method will help contribute to future management strategies for this high human-elephant conflict hotspot and other similar areas in Kenya. El incremento de la fragmentación del hábitat y el crecimiento de la población humana en África han resultado en un aumento del conflicto entre los pequeños agricultores y los elefantes africanos (Loxodonta africana) libres. En el 2012, el Servicio de Vida Silvestre de Kenia (KWS, en inglés) implementó a nivel nacional la Estrategia de Manejo y Conservación para el Elefante en Kenia con duración de 10 años, la cual incluye una acción enfocada en probar si los cercos de panales pueden utilizarse para mitigar el conflicto humano - elefante. De 2012 a 2015, probamos en el campo la eficiencia de los cercos de panales para proteger de los elefantes a diez granjas de 0.4 ha colindantes con el Parque Nacional Tsavo del Este. Colgamos una sere de panales cada 10 m alrededor de los límites de cada lote agrícola. Los panales se conectaron con un alambre fuerte. Después de una prueba piloto inicial en dos granjas, los ocho permanecientes de los diez cercos con panales también incluyeron panales-señuelo bidimensionales entre los panales verdaderos para ayudar a reducir el costo del cerco. Cada lote de prueba tuvo un lote de control vecino del mismo tamaño dentro de la misma granja. De los 131 panales implementados, el 88% fue ocupado por lo menos una vez durante la prueba de 3.5 años. Doscientos cincuenta y tres elefantes, predominantemente entre los 20 - 45 años de edad, entraron a la comunidad agrícola, comúnmente durante la temporada de maduración de las cosechas. El 80 % de los elefantes que se acercaron a las granjas de prueba se mantuvieron fuera de las áreas protegidas por los cercos de panales, y los elefantes que rompieron los cercos estuvieron dentro de grupos más pequeños al promedio. Los cercos de panales no sólo hicieron que grupos grandes de elefantes no invadieran los lotes agrícolas, sino los agricultores también se beneficiaron socialmente con la venta de 228 kg de miel amigable con los elefantes. Conforme se informó sobre el éxito de la prueba piloto, doce agricultores más pidieron unirse al proyecto, lo que llevó al número de granjas protegidas por cercos de panales a 22 y al de los panales a 297. Esto demuestra la adopción positiva de los cercos de panales como una herramienta comunitaria de mitigación. Entender la respuesta de los elefantes a los cercos de panales, la temporalidad de las incursiones hacia las cosechas y de la ruptura de los cercos, y la disponibilidad de la comunidad por participar en el método de mitigación ayudará a contribuir con las siguientes estrategias de manejo para este gran punto caliente del conflicto humano - elefante y en otras áreas similares en Kenia.
Pollination services are affected by landscape context, farming management and pollinator community structure, all of which impact flower visitation rates, pollen deposition and final production. We ...studied these processes in Argentina for highbush blueberry crops, which depend on pollinators to produce marketable yields.
We studied how land cover and honeybee stocking influence the abundance of wild and managed pollinators in blueberry crops, using structural equation modelling to disentangle the cascading effects through which pollinators contribute to blueberry fruit number, size, nutritional content and overall yield.
All pollinator functional groups responded to landscape changes at a spatial scale under 1000 m, and the significance or direction of the effects were modulated by the field‐level deployment of honeybee hives.
Fruit diameter increased with pollen deposited, but decreased with honeybee abundance, which, had indirect effects on fruit acidity. Honeybees had a positive effect on the number of fruit produced by the plants and also benefited the overall yield (kg plant−1) through independent effects on both the quality and quantity components of fruit production.
Synthesis and applications. Deployment of beehives in blueberry fields can buffer, but not compensate for the negative effects on honeybee abundance produced by surrounding large scale none‐flowering crops. Such compensation would require high‐quality beehives by monitoring their health and strength. The contribution of honeybees to crop production is not equal across production metrics. That is, higher abundance of honeybees increases the number of berries produced but at the cost of smaller and more acidic fruits, potentially reducing their market value. Growers must consider this trade‐off between fruit quantity and quality when actively managing honeybee abundance.
Deployment of beehives in blueberry fields can buffer, but not compensate for the negative effects on honeybee abundance produced by surrounding large scale none‐flowering crops. Such compensation would require high‐quality beehives by monitoring their health and strength. The contribution of honeybees to crop production is not equal across production metrics. That is, higher abundance of honeybees increases the number of berries produced but at the cost of smaller and more acidic fruits, potentially reducing their market value. Growers must consider this trade‐off between fruit quantity and quality when actively managing honeybee abundance.
The vital role of honeybees in pollination and their high rate of mortality in the last decade have raised concern among beekeepers and researchers alike. As such, robust and remote sensing of ...beehives has emerged as a potential tool to help monitor the health of honeybees. Over the last decade, several monitoring systems have been proposed, including those based on in-hive acoustics. Despite its popularity, existing audio-based systems do not take context into account (e.g., environmental noise factors), and thus the performance may be severely hampered when deployed. In this paper, we investigate the effect that three different environmental noise factors (i.e., nearby train rail squealing, beekeeper speech, and rain noise) can have on three acoustic features (i.e., spectrogram, mel frequency cepstral coefficients, and discrete wavelet coefficients) used in existing automated beehive monitoring systems. To this end, audio data were collected continuously over a period of three months (August, September, and October) in 2021 from 11 urban beehives located in downtown Montréal, Québec, Canada. A system based on these features and a convolutional neural network was developed to predict beehive strength, an indicator of the size of the colony. Results show the negative impact that environmental factors can have across all tested features, resulting in an increase of up to 355% in mean absolute prediction error when heavy rain was present.
The honeybee is the primary managed species worldwide for both crop pollination and honey production. Owing to beekeeping activity, its high relative abundance potentially affects the structure and ...functioning of pollination networks in natural ecosystems. Given that evidences about beekeeping impacts are restricted to observational studies of specific species and theoretical simulations, we still lack experimental data to test for their larger-scale impacts on biodiversity. Here we used a three-year field experiment in a natural ecosystem to compare the effects of pre- and post-establishment stages of beehives on the pollination network structure and plant reproductive success. Our results show that beekeeping reduces the diversity of wild pollinators and interaction links in the pollination networks. It disrupts their hierarchical structural organization causing the loss of interactions by generalist species, and also impairs pollination services by wild pollinators through reducing the reproductive success of those plant species highly visited by honeybees. High-density beekeeping in natural areas appears to have lasting, more serious negative impacts on biodiversity than was previously assumed.
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