Honey bees wear tiny backpacks to track thousands of pollination routes

32,000 QR code trackers provide unique glimpse inside the hive

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Several hundred honey bees in rural Pennsylvania and New York are sporting tiny high-tech accessories—miniature QR codes glued to their backs. These tags aren’t just the latest in bee fashion; they’re part of a study from Penn State solving a long-standing mystery: exactly how far do honey bees travel from their hives to collect pollen and nectar?

The system, called BeeCam-AprilTag, uses special identification tags about the size of a pinky nail attached to bees’ thoraxes (the middle segment of their body). Think of it as an ID badge system. Like workers scanning into a secure building, these bees “buzz in and out” of their hive, with cameras logging their movements through a customized entrance. Research published in HardwareX aimed to monitor honey bee travel patterns with these specially designed tags.

“In field biology, we usually just look at things with our eyes, but the number of observations we can make as humans will never scale up to what a machine can do,” explains study author Margarita López-Uribe, associate professor of entomology at Penn State, in a statement.

Throughout spring and summer 2024, researchers tagged over 32,000 bees across six locations. Every two weeks, they selected 600 newly emerged young bees across six colonies. These youngsters were ideal candidates.

“We targeted young bees so we could track their age more accurately, especially when they start to fly and when they stop,” says co-author Robyn Underwood. “Young bees are also softer and don’t sting yet, so they’re easier to handle.”

The tracking system combines affordable minicomputers called Raspberry Pis with cameras, lights, and special entrance tunnels. The entire setup costs less than $1,500 per apiary (which includes six colonies).

“Our goal was to develop something that could run in a rural environment, away from the lab, on solar power and to make everything open source. Anyone can use this system and modify it,” says co-author Diego Penaloza-Aponte.

While most recorded flights lasted between one and four minutes, with quick trips to check the weather or take “cleansing flights,” some bees spent considerably more time away. In fact, 34% of tagged bees were gone for more than two hours. During weeks with fewer available flowers, more bees spent extended time foraging, likely traveling farther to find food.

Perhaps most surprisingly, the study challenged existing beliefs about bee lifespans. While honey bees were thought to live about 28 days, researchers observed them foraging for six weeks after their initial two-week maturation period, which is significantly longer than previously believed.

The study aims to inform organic beekeeping practices. While the U.S. Department of Agriculture proposed organic certification standards in 2010, they were never implemented. Current estimates suggest bees can fly up to 10 kilometers from their hive, but researchers believe this distance is uncommon. More precise data could help establish practical organic certification requirements.

Looking ahead, the team is collaborating with Virginia Tech to compare foraging times with “waggle dance” data—the physical movements bees use to communicate food source locations to hive mates. They also plan to track other bee types and host workshops teaching scientists and beekeepers to build their own monitoring systems.