Deep Learning Beehive Monitoring System for Early Detection of the Varroa Mite

Abstract

One of the most critical causes of colony collapse disorder in beekeeping is caused by the Varroa mite. This paper presents an embedded camera module supported by a deep learning algorithm for the process of early detecting of Varroa infestations. This is achieved using a deep learning algorithm that tries to identify bees inside the brood frames carrying the mite in real-time. The end-node device camera module is placed inside the brood box. It is equipped with offline detection in remote areas of limited network coverage or online imagery data transmission and mite detection over the cloud. The proposed deep learning algorithm uses a deep learning network for bee object detection and an image processing step to identify the mite on the previously detected objects. Finally, the authors present their proof of concept experimentation of their approach that can offer a total bee and varroa detection accuracy of close to 70%. The authors present in detail and discuss their experimental results.