Buzz-based recognition of the honeybee colony circadian rhythm

Abstract Honeybees are one of the highly valued pollinators. Their work as individuals is appreciated for crops pollination and honey production. It is believed that work of an entire bee colony is intense and almost continuous. The goal of the work presented in this paper is identification of bees circadian rhythm with a use of sound-based analysis. In our research as a source of information on bee colony we use their buzz that have been analysed using algorithms. For the purpose of bees day/night definition, a dedicated electronic system has been developed. The data analysis involves demonstration of the circadian rhythm based on the RMS signal level. Method for defining the start and end of the presumed bees’ night was also presented. Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCCs) features and SVM classifier were used. The performed experiment shown the existence of repetitive cycles, which may indicate the presence of bee night. An attempt was made to estimate the time range of this phenomenon.