Radio Collars for Bees

Customers often ask me how we get the bees to collect a particular nectar source to make mono-floral honey (i.e., tupelo, orange blossom, etc.). I sometimes joke that we tried tiny radio collars, but they kept falling off. The truth is that beekeepers place the hives as close as possible to the target source, and the bees quickly figure it out.

Now comes a story that scientists in Australia have fitted 5,000 honey bees with tiny RFID transmitters. These RFID devices will be used to track bee movements in their environment. The collected data will be analyzed to better understand bee-havior, and also to find answers to the problems causing global bee populations to decline.

For more information, check out this story in the Daily Mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2540577/The-5-000-honeybees-fitted-backpacks-helping-scientists-understand-colonies-dying-out.html