Two students from Mount St. Michael are conducting an investigation into the effects of global warming on bee populations. They provide this summary of their work to date...
"Our project aims to help beekeepers monitor their bees by being able to watch the temperature and humidity of their hives, as well as being able to monitor bees through the use of a camera to help keep the bee population high.
We have used a Raspberry Pi camera connected to a Raspberry Pi 3 to keep track of the bees that enter and leave the hive. In addition a DHT11 is used to measure humidity and temperature.
The issue we are trying to solve is the decrease of the population of bees that is linked to global warming. Temperature rises appear to cause bees to leave their state of hibernation early which then results in them trying to pollinate flowers that haven't bloomed yet. This greatly effects their immune system, making them more susceptible to parasites.
In future we plan on making our project more compact and plan to install and test it in a beehive."
This group have already been placed 4th in SciFest@Teen-Turn and have reached the semi-finals in Eco-Unesco which take place at the end of March. They have also entered their project into the SciFest Regional Competition.
We wish them the best of luck with their project