Forage area estimation in European honeybees (Apis mellifera) by automatic waggle decoding of videos using a generic camcorder in field apiaries

Abstract

The waggle dances of European honeybees provide important information that can be used to estimate forage areas and identify food resource limitations. However, manually decoding these dances is labor-intensive. This study develops an automatic waggle decoding method applicable to video recordings taken in field apiaries using a generic camcorder with a normal frame rate. Particle image velocimetry was used to detect the typical characteristics of abdominal waggling in bees. We demonstrated our proposed method using video recordings taken at three hives in field apiaries. The decoded information was used to estimate forage area, which was compared against estimates obtained from manual decoding. For all three video recordings, we obtained a 78–87% overlap in the probable forage regions estimated using automatic and manual decoding. Our results suggest that our automatic decoding method is comparable to manual interpretation for the purposes of forage area estimation.