Modeling of the potential honey bee colony foraging activity based on the agrometeorological factors

Abstract

Honey bees are the main pollinators of the most agricultural plants on our planet. Foraging behaviour is one of the distinctive behaviours of honey bees and is like a link between the honey bee colony and the ambient environment. It is well known that environmental and meteorological factors can have either positive or negative impact on the foraging activity and the amount of gathered nectar and honey production. This research summarises the effect of the main agrometeorological factors, like temperature, humidity, wind and intensity of precipitation on the foraging activity. Within this research, a model for potential honey bee colony foraging activity based on the agrometeorological factors is presented and described. For the calculations weather forecast is used, either by the manual input or by the automatic uploading using the JSON format. The outcome of the model allows the beekeepers to predict and evaluate the potential amount of nectar to be foraged during the active season or specific period of time. This research is conducted within the Horizon 2020 FET programme project HIVEOPOLIS (https://www.hiveopolis.eu/).