GeoDanceHive: An Operational Hive for Honeybees Dances Recording

Honeybees are known for their ability to communicate about resources in their environment.<br> They inform the other foragers by performing specific dance sequences according to the spatial<br> characteristics of the resource. The purpose of our study is to provide a new tool for honeybees<br> dances recording, usable in the field, in a practical and fully automated way, without condemning<br> the harvest of honey. We designed and equipped an outdoor prototype of a production hive, later<br> called “GeoDanceHive”, allowing the continuous recording of honeybees’ behavior such as dances<br> and their analysis. The GeoDanceHive is divided into two sections, one for the colony and the other<br> serving as a recording studio. The time record of dances can be set up from minutes to several months.<br> To validate the encoding and sampling quality, we used an artificial feeder and visual decoding<br> to generate maps with the vector endpoints deduced from the dance information. The use of the<br> GeoDanceHive is designed for a wide range of users, who can meet different objectives, such as<br> researchers or professional beekeepers. Thus, our hive is a powerful tool for honeybees studies in the<br> field and could highly contribute to facilitating new research approaches and a better understanding<br> landscape ecology of key pollinators.