![\"Bee](\"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Snap14.jpg\")
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A tiny new tracker designed to monitor bee behaviour is being tested by ecologists at Kew Gardens in London.<\/strong><\/p>\n It is made from off-the-shelf technology and is based on equipment used to track pallets in warehouses, said its creator Dr Mark O’Neill.<\/p>\n Readers, used to pick up a signal from the kit, are connected to Raspberry Pi computers, which log the readings.<\/p>\n The device has a reach of up to 2.5m (8.2ft). Previously used models were restricted to 1cm (0.4in).<\/p>\n The tracker consists of a standard RFID (radio frequency identification) chip and a specially designed aerial, which Dr O’Neill has created to be thinner and lighter than other models used to track small insects, allowing him to boost the range.<\/p>\n The engineer, who is technical director at the Newcastle-based tech firm Tumbling Dice, is currently trying to patent the invention.<\/p>\n “The first stage was to make very raw pre-production tags using components I could easily buy”, he said,\u00a0“I want to make optimised aerial components which would be a lot smaller.\u00a0I’ve made about 50 so far. I’ve soldered them all on my desk – it feels like surgery.”<\/p>\n The average “forage time” for a worker bee is around 20 minutes, suggesting they have a forage range of around 1km (0.6 miles) , Dr O’Neill explained.<\/p>\n The idea is to have readers dotted around a hive and flower patch in order to track the signals as the bees move around freely in the wild.<\/p>\n Chilled bees<\/strong><\/p>\n The tiny trackers, which are just 8mm (0.3in) high and 4.8mm (1.9in) wide, are stuck to the bees with superglue in a process which takes five to 10 minutes. The bees are chilled first to make them more docile.<\/p>\n “They make a hell of a noise,” acknowledged Dr O’Neill.<\/p>\n He told the BBC he hoped that the trackers – which weigh less than a bee and are attached at their centre of gravity so as not to affect their flight – would remain attached for their three-month expected lifespan.<\/p>\n They have only been fitted to worker bees, which do not mate.<\/p>\n “If an animal ate one, I guess it would have a tracker in its stomach,” Dr O’Neill said.<\/p>\n “But the attrition rate for field worker bees is very low. Most die of old age – they are very competent, and good at getting out of the way.”<\/p>\n Dr Sarah Barlow, a restoration ecologist from Kew Gardens, was involved in testing the as-yet unnamed trackers.<\/p>\n “These tags are a big step forward in radio technology and no one has a decent medium to long range tag yet that is suitable for flying on small insects,” she said.<\/p>\n “This new technology will open up possibilities for scientists to track bees in the landscape.<\/p>\n “This piece of the puzzle, of bee behaviour, is absolutely vital if we are to understand better why our bees are struggling and how we can reverse their decline.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A tiny new tracker designed to monitor bee behaviour is being tested by ecologists at Kew Gardens in London. It is made from off-the-shelf technology and is based on equipment used to track pallets in warehouses, said its creator Dr Mark O’Neill. Readers, used to pick up a signal from the kit, are connected to … Continue reading Bee behaviour mapped by tiny trackers<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[84,85,83],"class_list":["post-209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-bee","tag-bee-behaviour","tag-tiny-trackers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":212,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209\/revisions\/212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Bee](\"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/Snap23.jpg\")
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