[Dataset] Effective Searching for the Honeybee Queen in a Living Colony

README for the "Effective Searching for the Honeybee Queen in a Living Colony" Dataset

Dataset Overview

This dataset supports the analyses and experiments of the paper:

Blaha et al., "Effective Searching for the Honeybee Queen in a Living Colony," CASE 2024. DOI: 10.1109/CASE59546.2024.10711366

The dataset provides comprehensive observations of honeybee queen behaviour within an observation hive captured using an automated robotic system. The primary objective is to facilitate research in precision beekeeping by offering detailed spatial and temporal data on bee activities.

Data Collection Methodology

The data was collected using a robotic system equipped with sensors and cameras designed to non-invasively monitor bee activity within the hive. The system performed systematic scans of predefined locations, capturing images and detecting bee positions and orientations. This approach minimizes disturbance to the bees and ensures consistent data quality. For more details, see Ulrich et al., "Autonomous tracking of honey bee behaviours over long-term periods with cooperating robots," Science Robotics 2024. DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.adn6848.

Data Structure and File Contents

The dataset consists of one file 2023-month-queenpos-short.txt which is a CSV formatted file containing the following columns:

Column Number
Column Name
Units
Description

1
Timestamp

ns

Timestamp of the detection in Unix epoch seconds (UTC).

2
Camera
-
String representing the particular camera (e.g., "/hive_2/xy_1/camera_1" represents hive n. 2, robot on side 1, camera is duplicated)

3
Heading
rad
Orientation of the Whycon marker in the image.

4
X - Queen
m
X-coordinate of the honeybee queen's position in meters.

5
Y - Queen
m
Y-coordinate of the honeybee queen's position in meters.

6
X - Camera
m
X-coordinate of the camera's position in meters.

7
Y - Camera
m
Y-coordinate of the camera's position in meters.

8
X - Queen in Image
m
X-coordinate of the queen's metric position in the image in meters.

9
Y - Queen in Image
m
Y-coordinate of the queen's metric position in the image in meters.

Note: the observation hive has two sides, each monitored by a separate robot.

License and Citation

To attribute this dataset in your research, please cite the two corresponding papers:

Blaha et al., "Effective Searching for the Honeybee Queen in a Living Colony," CASE 2024. DOI: 10.1109/CASE59546.2024.10711366Ulrich et al., "Autonomous tracking of honey bee behaviours over long-term periods with cooperating robots," Science Robotics 2024. DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.adn6848