Preliminary studies of honey queen bee conditions using Cyranose 320 nose technology

Abstract

Over the last ten years, the bee keeping industry has been struggling to understand and stop the sudden widespread loss or collapse of honey bee colonies, known collectively as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), in the U.S. and around the world. While honey bee colonies experience many stressors that could cause a colony to collapse, we are focusing on the quality, health and reproductive ability of honey bee queens. The purpose of this line of research is to identify relationships between the pheromone signatures of honey bee queens and the quality of honey bee queens. The ultimate goal of this research is to find a reliable, non-invasive tool that does not harm the queen, but still allows beekeepers to make informed decisions about purchasing honey bee queens and deciding when to replace a queen bee before a colony collapses. In this portion of the research, we use an electronic nose (e-nose) device, which is a device that digitizes smells. The scope of this paper is to determine whether an e-nose device is viable for our research, and if so, to determine the best way to configure the settings to improve data collection. Also, to gather data on queen bee pheromones production was considered since that is an indicator of a queen bee's reproductive ability. We were able to use the e-nose device to digitize pheromone signatures from 20 queen bees. Using Microsoft excel and R programming language, we were able to see patterns that will be useful in configuring the e-nose device for future research. We also noticed an early indication that the e-nose can distinguish between a healthy bee and a sick bee.