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Beekeeping for Honey Production in Sri Lanka Based on Forage Distance

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ISSN 2321 3361 © 2020 IJESC

Research Article Volume 10 Issue No.7

Beekeeping for Honey Production in Sri Lanka Based on Forage

Distance
Damindu Wijayanga1, B. G. D. A. Madhusanka2, H. D. N. S. Priyankara3
Department of Mechanical Engineering
The Open University of Sri Lanka, Nawala, Nugegoda, Sri Lanka
Abstract:
Dance communication in honeybees has described as one of the most impressive forms of communication in animals, and it is one of
the most famous examples of information transfer in the animal world. However, more than 69 years after the initial discovery of the
meaning of the dance, it remains obscure how bees manage to decode information in the dance and thus which of the many dance
signals carry information. Honeybees have always attracted attention due to their famous “waggle dance” an intriguing and complex
behaviour that bees use to convey spatial information on desirable resources. In this paper focused the statistics of visually captured
high-precision dance trajectories of Asian honeybees (Apis Cerana Indica) in Sri Lanka. The paths were produced using a novel
vision-based tracking system and represent the most of dance motion information. Finally, we provided a bee dance identification
algorithm, technologies. We developed an algorithm for the amount of sugar syrup to improve an automatic bee feeder-based system
for quality honey production in Sri Lanka based on forage distance.
Keywords: Beekeeping, Honey Production, Forage Distance, Waggle Dance, Image Processing, Convolution Neural Network,
Machine Learning.
I. INTRODUCTION activities. These communication methods could be categorized
into two broad groups, such as below [1, 2].
Production of honey by honeybees is one of the fascinating 1.Chemical Communication Signals.
phenomena in applied biology and technology. It is not only 2.Physical Communication Signals.
natural and technological fascination but a process that has a The chemical communication system is essential in the
direct economic value. In Sri Lanka, Beekeeping for honey functional integration of the colony is brought about by several
production is essentially an operation in field biotechnology, and chemical substances which are used in chemical communication
agricultureand beekeeping are mostly practised as a full-time and are called pheromones. Some glands produce these in the
occupation and an exciting hobby to produce handsome income bodies of workers and queen. Of these pheromones, the queen
and table honey. The beekeeper must coordinate the activities of substance (mainly 9-oxo-2-decenoic acid or 9ODA) which is
two groups of organisms, the nectar and pollen-producing plants provided in the mandibular gland of the queen is a popular
and the honeybees, at an optimum level. Honeybees can queen pheromone. Two essential functions of the queen
communicate the position of the sun concerning the direction of substance are the maintenance of colony cohesion and
gravity. Also, honeybees are located nearby the food source suppression of the development of ovaries in workers [1, 3].
along with the continuous line between the nest and position of Also, the physical communication signals of honeybees, the one
the sun. And the continuous line length is forage distance of that strikes us most and the one that seems a beautiful
scout bees. There are many gain competencies in managing phenomenon in the animal world, is called the "Bee Dance". The
honeybees such as many income-generating pursuits, simplest way to understand the effectiveness and efficiency in
agricultural or otherwise have a detrimental impact on the the communication ability of honeybees is to place a dish of
natural environment. Conservation of honeybees should be an honey in the open. Sometimes a honeybee worker may take a
intended aspect of environmental protection. In this regard, an few hours or a few days to find this unusual source of food
appropriate motto will be "protect the bees to protect Nature". In because they usually go to flowers to gather food. The scout bee
many inhabited localities in Sri Lanka and Asian Countries the who discovers a source of food on return to her nest will run
major problem of maintaining honeybees and decrement of among her nestmates in excitement to draw their attention to her.
honey quality due to excessive feed of sugar syrup. The reason Then she offers the food brought to a group of nestmates called
is the lack of a sufficient amount of nectar due to the lack of foraging bees. During the process of food offering, the offering,
nectar-yielding plants and honeybees are abscond the bee and the recipient bees mutually antennae each other. Once the
colony. So, apiculture farmers supply supplementary feeding of scout bee finishes offering the food she brought, then she starts
colonies with sugar syrup. Then the honey quality was to perform a distinct and rhythmic pattern of body movements
decrement. which is called a “Bee Dance” [1,4].
II. BACKGROUND STUDY
2.2Bee Dance: In hive honeybees depending on the distance
2.1 Communication in Honeybees: Ability of an animal to between the nest (or the hive) and the food source three distinct
manipulate the behaviour of another animal of the same species patterns of body movements or three different types of dances
is called communication for proper coordination of their

IJESC, July 2020 26612 http:// ijesc.org/

can be observed such as Round dance, Sickle dance, and Waggle
dance.
Round Dance:
Figure.1. Round Dance
After food offering, the pioneer scout bee will run in a circular
pathis shown inFigure1. The round dance is used for food
sources, less than 10 meters away from the hive or closer. After
distributing some of her new-found nectar to waiting bees, the
scout will begin running in a small circle, switching direction
every so often. After the dance ends, again food is kept the same
place or another place at on the comb, and the dance may be
repeated three ormore times. The round dance does not give
directional information. Bees elicited into foraging after a round
dance flies out of the hive in all directions, searching for the
food source they know must be there. Odour helps recruited bees
find the new flowers in two ways. Bees are watching the dance
detect the fragrance of the flower left on the dancing bee.
Honeybees can communicate the position of the sun for the
direction of gravity [3, 5].
Sickle Dance:
Figure.2. Sickle Dance
The bee distance about the food source is between 10 meters to
25meters from the nest, and the dancing bee runs ona sickle-
shaped circuitis shown in Figure2.
The angle between the line going through the middle of the open
end of the sickle dance circuit, the centre of the circle, and the
gravitational line going through the centre of the circle has
described the direction to the food source concerning the sun [2,
3].
IJESC, July 2020 26613
Waggle Dance:
Figure.3. Waggle Dance
In the event of the bee discovering a source of food beyond 25
meters from the nest, scout bees perform waggle dance as in the
above mention Figure3. And on return to the nest after food-
offering among her crowded nest mates she runs on a straight
path shaking her abdomen. After performing the tail wagging
run on a straight way for a definite period lasting for a few
seconds, she returns to the starting point on a semi-circular pa
this shown in Figure3. The dance tempo or the tail wagging
frequency of the straight tail wagging run and its inclination to
the direction of the location of the food source from the nest. It
could easily be observed that the dance tempo or the tail
wagging frequency increases as the distance to food source
decrease and the time spent on each straight waggle run to
increase as the distance increases [1,5,6,7].
2.3 Forage Distance and Direction: For foraging honeybees, it
is not essential to see the sun directly to determine the sun's
relative position only by seeing plane-polarized light. Bees are
sensitive to plain polarized light which is usually reflected from
the blue sky. Depending on the position of the sun, light pattern,
and polarized light changes were observed by the foraging
honeybees. They are very sensitive to the above parameters.
Then Mee Bees can determine the direction of gravity.
Therefore, Mee Bees can perform the communication dance on a
vertical comb and inform their nestmates of the location of a
food source about sun's position by using the direction of gravity
to represent the continuous line between the sun and the nest.
According to the previous researches, we can show the distance
calculation as below, After food offering, the pioneer scout bee
will run in a wagging movement in and outside of thecomb. Sri
Lanka's indigenous hive honeybee, Apis Cerana Indica type
scout bee perform eight waggle phases in a one minute.
According to the past researchers [2, 8], 1𝑚𝑖𝑛 = 1000𝑚
suppose the waggle physicalcommunication. Because of that, we
can calculate the distance of foraging bees fly. Absconding or
the desertion of the hive is the most challenging management
problem of Apis Cerana Indica in Sri Lanka. Several reasons are
given for this behaviour such as shortage of nectar, genetical
factors, frequent and or excessive disturbance and the existence
of pests such as Wax Moths, Hornets, Ants, etc. [1,9].
III. METHODOLOGY
Experimental data has collected from the hive between hourly
basis each day for 7 hours. For captured images, used C922 PRO
HD STREAM WEBCAM, since the camera features are good
http:// ijesc.org/
enough to this experiment. The camera is focused on the hive and validation loss vs no. of epochs. Also, training and
gate surface, where 0.5 meters away from the bee colony and validation accuracy vs no. of epochs is shown in Figure6.
approximately45° degree angle from vertically. Convolutional
Neural Network (CNN) is used to detect the type of honeybee Train. Loss vs Val. Loss
dance and calculate the forager's distance accordance. Then, the 1.4
system detects forage paths of bees on a map and compare 1.2
current distance and nominal distance using CNN. If the current
range is greater than the nominal length, activate the sugar syrup 1 Train_Loss
feeder automatically. Finally, maintain the required amount of 0.8

Loss
sugar syrup automatically. 0.6 Val_Los
0.4
0.2
0
1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28
No. of Epoch

Figure.5.Training and Validation Loss Vs No. of Epochs

Train. Acc vs Val. Acc

1.2
1

Accuracy
0.8 Train_Acc
0.6
0.4 Val_Acc

0.2
0
1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28
No. of Epoch
Figure.6.Training and Validation Accuracy Vs No. ofEpochs

Honey bees perform physical communication signals when

Figure.4.Block diagram of the proposed system
The proposed block diagram is shown in Figure4, and the
proposed algorithm is based on Figure4.Also, the algorithm is
expected to achieve better results without any excessive amount
of sugar syrup. The experimental model has automatically
detected waggle dance images and compatible forage distance
and the proper amount of sugar syrup to protect the apiculture
farmers. In this research is used bee colony to preserve the
primary source of the camera, and it is used for captured images.
CNN is used to identify the waggle bee clearly by binary
pictures and learn the waggle images and visualize.
nectar and pollen are decreased in the bee colony. Then, the
source of food is more than 25 meters away from the nest, and
then scout bees are performed waggle communication. The scout
bee performs waggle dance during 1 minute and then
communicate to the forage bees when the distance between bee
colony and forage location at 1 km. During the experiment
identified minimum and maximum time to waggle dance vary to
1.5 seconds to 60 seconds. Figure 7 shows of the waggle
identification during the experiment using CNN.

IV. RESULTS

The evaluation result of waggle dance predicts value is 98.16 per (a) (b)
cent. For CNN training, 30 epochs were used to get the high
training accuracy. CNN training accuracy is increased, and
training loss is decreased inverse proportionally with the number
of epochs were used. Also, training accuracy depends on the
number of layers that are used for the CNN and the number of
images (both waggle and other bee paths) that used for training.
We analyzed the behaviour of 304 dance followers with 214 (c) (d)
dances in fourteen bee colonies. Figure5 is shown the training
Figure.7. Waggle Bee Paths

IJESC, July 2020 26614 http:// ijesc.org/

The proposed algorithm was identified shapes of the waggle
dances are shown in Figure7(a), 7(b), 7(c) and 7(d). According
to that, time taken to each waggle dance is 1.620s, 2.320s,
2.466s, and 3.292s respectively. Honey bees travel 27m, 38
.66m, 41.1m and 54.883m, respectively to the above mentioned
time durations.
V. CONCLUSION
In this research was explained about the communication of
honeybees. Also, detailed about the three types of physical
communication and explained about those three types of
physical communications and dance performance separately.
Especially about the performance of the "waggle dance" and
explained the characteristics of waggle dance and the distance
that bees go after performing waggle dance. This system is
identified and detect waggle dance after performing by
honeybees. The proposed algorithm is used to identify the
waggle dance accurately. After performing waggle dance, the
system is identified the distance that honeybees go. The CNN is
good enough to detect all waggle bee paths.
[6].Landgraf, T., Rojas, R., Nguyen, H., Kriegel, F. and Stettin,
K. Analysis of the Waggle Dance Motion of Honeybees for the
Design of a Biomimetic Honeybee Robot. PLoS ONE, (2011),
6(8), p.e21354.
[7].Phuquocbeefarm.com. The Honey bee Waggle Dance - is it a
Language? [Online] Available at: http:// www. phuquoc bee
farm.com/2017/02/the-honey-bee-waggle-dance-is-it.html [Acce
ssed 20 Nov. 2019].
[8].Kietzman, P.M. and Visscher, P.K. Follower Position Does
Not Affect Waggle Dance Information Transfer. Psyche: A
Journal of Entomology, 2019, pp.1–5.
[9].A. Veeeraraghavan, R. Chellappa, Shape-and-Behavior-
EncodingT racking of Bee Dance, IEEE Computer Socity.
(2017).10.1109/TPAMI.20177070

VI.ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my most profound appreciation to all
those who provided me with the possibility to complete this
journal. First and foremost, I wish to express my sincere thanks
to the Provincial Department of Agriculture-Western Province
and Uva Province Bee Keeping Development Units. Also,
Assistant Director of Agriculture Mr P.M. Pushpa kumara
(Kananwila-Bee Keeping Development) and Mr R. Wimukthi
Gurugamage (Bindunuwewa-Bee Keeping Development)
respectively for accepting my project into Department of
Agriculture in Sri Lanka. Furthermore, I would also like to
acknowledge with much appreciation to the all staff of
Kananwila and Bindunuwewa Bee Keeping Units, that gave the
support to use all required equipment and the necessary
materials and documents to completemy project task

VII. REFERENCES

[1]. Ranjith Wasantha Kumara Punchihewa. Beekeeping for

honey production in Sri Lanka: management of Asiatic
hive honeybee Apiscerana in its natural tropical monsoonal
environment. Peradeniya, SriLanka Sri Lanka Dept. Of
Agriculture (1994); Hull, Quebec

[2].Schnne, H.Optokinetic speed control and estimation of travel

distancein walking honeybees. Journal of Comparative Physi
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[3].Veeraraghavan, A., Chellappa, R. and Srinivasan, M. Shape-
and-BehaviorEncoded Tracking of Bee Dances. IEEE
Transactions onPattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence,
(2008), 30(3), pp.463–476.

[4].Abou-Shaara, H. The foraging behaviour of honey bees,

Apismellifera:a review. Veterinární Medicína, (2014), 59(No.
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[5]. Wario, F., Wild, B., Rojas, R. and Landgraf, T. Automatic

detectionand decoding of honey bee waggle dances. PLOS
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