Rush Hour at The Hut’s stingless bee hive!

We’re testing our new set-up (Raspberry Pi4b + Picam + python code) to count our Tetragonula carbonaria bees entering and exiting the hive at The Hut across the 24-hour cycle. We approximate this by counting bees crossing the central green line, in a perspex box leading to the exit.

Here’s one minute of rush hour on Tuesday 11 Aug at 2pm. The counter clocked up 134 entrances (left-to-right) and 104 exits (right-to-left). Accurate to about 2% - and then some bees cross the green line but get pushed back and cross again so actual flights are fewer, and it’s a lot more accurate whenthe traffic is lower.

We are running validation tests to fine-tune the code - but have already observed the strong relationship between temperature and activity.

It also looks like average flight time (estimated from the lag between best-fitting Gaussian curves for entrances and exits is also higher with increased temperature (Greater metabolic efficiency? More competition for resources near the hive forcing longer flights?)

We’ll update this page as the project progresses!