SBIR Phase I: Queen Honey Bee Location Identification

The broader/commercial impact of this Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project lies in improving beekeeping efficiency through bio-acoustic technology, addressing a critical challenge in modern apiculture. Beekeepers struggle to locate queen bees within their hives, a process that is labor-intensive, time-consuming, and disruptive to colony health. The inability to efficiently locate and assess the condition of a queen bee contributes to hive losses, negatively impacting honey production and pollination-dependent agriculture. Given the essential role of honey bees in pollination, improving hive management has significant economic and ecological implications. By developing a novel bio-acoustic approach to attract queen bees to a predictable location within the hive, the technology will reduce labor costs, enhance hive monitoring, and increase productivity for commercial, sideline, and hobbyist beekeepers. The integration of advanced sensing and artificial intelligence into beekeeping practices will contribute to sustainable precision agriculture, with applications extending beyond honey bee management into broader agricultural and ecological monitoring systems. This project introduces an innovative bio-acoustic luring system that leverages queen bee communication signals to enable rapid and accurate queen localization within managed hives. The technical innovation lies in the application of bio-acoustic principles to mimic naturally occurring queen bee piping sounds, which trigger predictable responses from the resident queen. This approach has not been previously commercialized and represents a novel method of influencing honey bee behavior for practical hive management applications. The research will focus on refining the acoustic signal parameters, optimizing speaker placement, and evaluating queen bee movement in response to controlled stimuli. A series of field experiments will be conducted in controlled and real-world hive environments to quantify the effectiveness of the bio-acoustic luring system in reducing queen search time and minimizing colony disturbance. The study will also assess the impact of various environmental factors on signal propagation and queen bee responsiveness. This research will establish a foundation for precision beekeeping tools that enhance hive management efficiency while maintaining honey bee health and productivity. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.