‘Beepocalypse now’: Micro-sensors stuck to honey bees to help solve mass deaths

Australian scientists have revealed they are using micro-sensors attached to honey bees as part of a global push to understand the key factors driving a worldwide population decline of the pollinators.

There has been a sharp plunge in the population of honey bees, which pollinate about 70 percent of global crops, or one-third of food that humans eat including fruits and vegetables, raising fears over food security.

Researchers have said the falling hive numbers were caused by threats such as the sudden death of millions of adult insects in beehives -- known as ”colony collapse disorder” - a blood-sucking mite called Varroa, pesticides and climate change.

“The micro-sensors that we are using help us to ask different questions that we couldn’t ask before because we’ve never really been able to quantify the behaviour of bees both out in the environment and in their hives,” Gary Fitt from Australia’s national science agency CSIRO said.

The sensors, 2.5 millimetres in width and breadth and weighing 5.4 milligrams - lighter than pollen that bees collect -- are glued to the back of European honey bees. Sophisticated data collection receptors are also built into hives.

The CSIRO - working together with US technology firm Intel and Japanese conglomerate Hitachi - is now offering free access to the sensor technology and data analytics to identify global patterns.

“What we are gathering with the sensors is environmental information from where the bees have been,” said Fitt, the science director of the CSIRO’s health and biosecurity division.