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Open AccessReview

The Chemical Residues in Secondary Beekeeping Products of Environmental Origin

by Joanna Wojtacka

Molecules 2024, 29(16), 3968; https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules29163968 - 22 Aug 2024

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2799

Natural products of bee origin, despite their complex composition and difficulties in standardization, have been of high interest among scientists representing various disciplines from basic sciences to industrial and practical implementation. As long as their use is monitored and they do not impact human health, they can be considered valuable sources of many chemical compounds and are potentially useful in medicine, food processing, nutrition, etc. However, apart from honey, the general turnover of bee products lacks precise and detailed legal requirements ensuring their quality. The different residues in these products constitute a problem, which has been reported in numerous studies. All products derived from beekeeping are made by bees, but they are also influenced by the environment. Such a dual pathway requires detailed surveillance of hazards stemming from outside and inside the apiary. This should be ensured via harmonized requirements arising from the binding legal acts, especially in international and intercontinental trade zones. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Phytochemistry, Human Health and Molecular Mechanisms)

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28 pages, 2393 KB

Open AccessArticle

Ambient Electromagnetic Radiation as a Predictor of Honey Bee (Apis mellifera) Traffic in Linear and Non-Linear Regression: Numerical Stability, Physical Time and Energy Efficiency

by Vladimir A. Kulyukin, Daniel Coster, Anastasiia Tkachenko, Daniel Hornberger and Aleksey V. Kulyukin

Sensors 2023, 23(5), 2584; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23052584 - 26 Feb 2023

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 3186

Abstract

Since bee traffic is a contributing factor to hive health and electromagnetic radiation has a growing presence in the urban milieu, we investigate ambient electromagnetic radiation as a predictor of bee traffic in the hive’s vicinity in an urban environment. To that end, we built two multi-sensor stations and deployed them for four and a half months at a private apiary in Logan, UT, USA. to record ambient weather and electromagnetic radiation. We placed two non-invasive video loggers on two hives at the apiary to extract omnidirectional bee motion counts from videos. The time-aligned datasets were used to evaluate 200 linear and 3,703,200 non-linear (random forest and support vector machine) regressors to predict bee motion counts from time, weather, and electromagnetic radiation. In all regressors, electromagnetic radiation was as good a predictor of traffic as weather. Both weather and electromagnetic radiation were better predictors than time. On the 13,412 time-aligned weather, electromagnetic radiation, and bee traffic records, random forest regressors had higher maximum

R^{2}

scores and resulted in more energy efficient parameterized grid searches. Both types of regressors were numerically stable. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor and AI Technologies in Intelligent Agriculture)

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15 pages, 2768 KB

Open AccessArticle

Bio-Ethology of Vespa crabro in Sardinia (Italy), an Area of New Introduction

by Michelina Pusceddu, Matteo Lezzeri, Arturo Cocco, Ignazio Floris and Alberto Satta

Biology 2022, 11(4), 518; https://doi.org/10.3390/biology11040518 - 28 Mar 2022

Cited by 9 | Viewed by 5599

Abstract

Vespa crabro, also known as European hornet, is a eusocial Vespidae originally from Eurasia that was accidentally introduced on the island of Sardinia (Italy) in 2010. Currently, its distribution is limited to the northern area of the island. Considering that a non-harmful species in its native region can exhibit invasive behaviour when established in new environments, bio-ethological observations were conducted to better understand whether V. crabro could show invasive traits in Sardinia, which represents a new introduction area. Data on the foraging activity of the European hornet in open fields were collected within a citizen science monitoring program carried out in Sardinia from 2018 to 2020. Moreover, specific behavioural observations were made in apiaries to assess the predatory activity of the hornet towards honey bees and at the entrance of free-living European hornet colonies to evaluate other aspects of its behaviour, i.e., intranidal and extranidal tasks. The results of our study are discussed in relation to the behavioural traits known for this species in its native areas to place the behavioural repertoire of V. crabro in Sardinia into a wider context. Our observations revealed that V. crabro did not show any changes in behavioural traits in Sardinia compared to those described in its area of origin, so the risk of becoming an invasive species on this island seems unlikely. Full article

(This article belongs to the Section Behavioural Biology)

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17 pages, 6475 KB

Open AccessArticle

Unprecedented Density and Persistence of Feral Honey Bees in Urban Environments of a Large SE-European City (Belgrade, Serbia)

by Jovana Bila Dubaić, Slađan Simonović, Milan Plećaš, Ljubiša Stanisavljević, Slobodan Davidović, Marija Tanasković and Aleksandar Ćetković

Insects 2021, 12(12), 1127; https://doi.org/10.3390/insects12121127 - 16 Dec 2021

Cited by 28 | Viewed by 9245

Abstract

It is assumed that wild honey bees have become largely extinct across Europe since the 1980s, following the introduction of exotic ectoparasitic mite (Varroa) and the associated spillover of various pathogens. However, several recent studies reported on unmanaged colonies that survived the Varroa mite infestation. Herewith, we present another case of unmanaged, free-living population of honey bees in SE Europe, a rare case of feral bees inhabiting a large and highly populated urban area: Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. We compiled a massive data-set derived from opportunistic citizen science (>1300 records) during the 2011–2017 period and investigated whether these honey bee colonies and the high incidence of swarms could be a result of a stable, self-sustaining feral population (i.e., not of regular inflow of swarms escaping from local managed apiaries), and discussed various explanations for its existence. We also present the possibilities and challenges associated with the detection and effective monitoring of feral/wild honey bees in urban settings, and the role of citizen science in such endeavors. Our results will underpin ongoing initiatives to better understand and support naturally selected resistance mechanisms against the Varroa mite, which should contribute to alleviating current threats and risks to global apiculture and food production security. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Impact of Environmental Factors and Management Practices on Bee Health)

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16 pages, 2986 KB

Open AccessArticle

The Buzz Changes within Time: Native Apis mellifera mellifera Honeybee Subspecies Less and Less Popular among Polish Beekeepers Since 1980

by Małgorzata Bieńkowska, Aleksandra Splitt, Paweł Węgrzynowicz and Robert Maciorowski

Agriculture 2021, 11(7), 652; https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture11070652 - 11 Jul 2021

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 3853

Abstract

Socio-cultural research might address anthropocentric reasons for honeybee (Apis mellifera) conservation. In some regions, particular honeybee subspecies are considered to be native; A. mellifera mellifera (“dark bee”) in the north-east and A. mellifera carnica in the Island Beskids in Poland. Additionally, A. mellifera caucasia (often incorrectly called A. mellifera caucasica) and Buckfast are reported across Poland. In order to verify the actual choice of beekeepers, a survey on honeybee subspecies kept in apiaries was conducted annually from 1980 to 2018. This is a way to verify if conservation management towards the dark bee influenced its maintenance at a sufficient level for their restoration. The analysis revealed that Polish beekeepers know what is “buzzing” in their hives, and the awareness of which subspecies/types of honeybee they maintain has grown through the years. Initially, they kept up to four different subspecies per apiary, but now most have only one (maximum of two). Currently, Polish apiaries approach a homogeneous share with the exclusive presence of A. mellifera carnica subspecies. The popularity of indigenous A. mellifera mellifera has declined over time and is low now. It seems that new solutions should be considered to increase the effectiveness of dark European bee conservation management efforts. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Emerging Problems of Modern Beekeeping)

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18 pages, 31763 KB

Open AccessArticle

Audio, Image, Video, and Weather Datasets for Continuous Electronic Beehive Monitoring

by Vladimir Kulyukin

Appl. Sci. 2021, 11(10), 4632; https://doi.org/10.3390/app11104632 - 19 May 2021

Cited by 26 | Viewed by 4850

Abstract

In 2014, we designed and implemented BeePi, a multi-sensor electronic beehive monitoring system. Since then we have been using BeePi monitors deployed at different apiaries in northern Utah to design audio, image, and video processing algorithms to analyze forager traffic in the vicinity of Langstroth beehives. Since our first publication on BeePi in 2016, we have received multiple requests from researchers and practitioners for the datasets we have used in our research. The main objective of this article is to provide a comprehensive point of reference to the datasets that we have so far curated for our research. We hope that our datasets will provide stable performance benchmarks for continuous electronic beehive monitoring, help interested parties verify our findings and correct errors, and advance the state of the art in continuous electronic beehive monitoring and related areas of AI, machine learning, and data science. Full article

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