An article about PoshBee was featured in the November 2020 issue of the Bee Craft magazine. The article titled "Brood day by day: What can we learn?" provides insight on the brood monitoring procedure that is applied in the PoshBee project.

Author Matthew Allen of Atlantic Pollination Ltd. describes the process of acquiring comprehensive data on adult and juvenile bee mortality by using image recognition software for monitoring. Within the PoshBee project, the method is used for analysis of honeybee colonies when exposed to field realistic doses of plant protection chemicals such as pesticides.

Brood day by day: What can we learn? by Matthew Allen. Bee Craft magazine, November 2020.

The article illustrates the techniques used for the PoshBee project, with which the project aims to create "the first panEuropean quantification of the exposure hazard of chemicals not only to honey bees but also to wild bees, and to determine how single chemicals, chemicals in mixtures, and in combination with pathogens and nutrition, affect bee health", says Matthew Allen.

By using photographs and image recognition software, permanent records of brood data which can be verified and are not subject to observer bias in the field are created, therefore ensuring a precise and accurate measure of brood development. Rapid adoption of image recognition technology which can handle massive amounts of data quickly is a key breakthrough in this type of analysis.

Brood watching performed by analysing frames and tracking brood development. Source: Brood day by day: What can we learn? by Matthew Allen. Bee Craft magazine, November 2020.

Read the full article here.