People Are Using Raspberry Pis To Keep Tabs On The Bees In Ways That Humans Couldn

Raspberry Pi Zero W

Key Takeaways

Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W used to create automatic bee counter
YOLO algorithm trained to detect bees for hive monitoring
Room for additional sensors to enhance environmental monitoring

When you first look at a Raspberry Pi, it’s easy to think “Why bother with this when computers are far more powerful?” While cost is definitely one of the factors behind opting for a Pi, people often overlook how tiny a Raspberry Pi can get. This makes them the ideal computer for fieldwork, which we’ve already seen when someone made a Raspberry Pi monitor that lets them talk to their plant. Now, researchers from the Federal University of Itajuba in Brazil have teamed up to make an automatic bee counter that can achieve what a human couldn’t properly do by themselves.

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Using a Raspberry Pi to monitor hive activity

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In a post on Hackster.iothe Federal University of Itajuba is working on a way to count bees as they enter and exit their hive. This job is a lot more important than you may think, as researchers can use the data to monitor how the bees are acting, which in turn can tip them off about potential issues in the bee’s local environment. There’s only one problem with counting bees, and that’s trying to find someone that’s willing to stand in front of a hive and count them, for long periods of the day, without ever making a mistake.

Enter the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W. Combined with a Raspberry Pi Camera Module, the Pi Zero 2 was programmed with an object algorithm called You Only Look Once (YOLO) and trained to pick out bees. Once done, the unit was set outside a hive to perform object detection. So far, the university has been having great success with its new digital bee counter.

The best bit is, that there’s still plenty of room on the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W for more sensors to give researchers an even better idea of what’s happening. For instance, they’re considering adding sensors for temperature and humidity to keep an eye on how the bees’ environment looks. And while the researchers believe there’s still room to make the algorithm faster and more accurate, it sure beats someone having to stare at a hive for hours on end.