YOU CAN BUILD THE RIG THAT GIVES EVERY BEE IN THE HIVE ITS OWN BARCODE
Track the foraging trips of individually tagged bees at the hive entrance, timed to the second, with a solar-powered six-camera rig whose published parts list comes to roughly 1,750 dollars.
by Penaloza-Aponte and colleagues, Penn State
ScienceOpen-hardware
Built withRaspberry Pi3D printing
- difficulty
- ●●●●○
- time
- a weekend-plus
- license
- CC-BY-4.0
- repo
- repo FINISHED0 stars
●●●●○ · a weekend-plus · CC-BY-4.0 · 0 stars · repo FINISHED
WHAT YOU’LL NEED
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COMPAREE VERDICT
This is a research instrument, not a weekend beekeeper project. You are building a solar-powered set of Raspberry Pi camera units that read tiny AprilTag markers as bees walk through a modified hive entrance, logging every detected departure and return with timestamps. The hardware is straightforward — IP65 enclosures, a 100 Ah battery, solar charge controller, Raspberry Pi 4 with Camera Module 3 Wide, white LED strips — but the real work is tagging individual bees (paper tags glued on with shellac, steady hands) and tuning the detection software to read tags on moving insects. The paper and its Zenodo files give you everything: bill of materials, enclosure templates, the 3D-printed entrance, tag files, ready-made SD card images and a manual. In the paper's example analysis, 21 days of data produced 675 foraging trips. The paper's summary puts the six-camera system under 1,500 dollars, but the line items in its own bill of materials add up to about 1,750, with the solar and battery side (about 780) the largest block. The most likely failure is detection accuracy — lighting, focus, and tag placement all matter, and bees that rush through or crawl upside down are missed. If you are studying foraging behaviour and need per-bee trip durations with a camera instead of RFID, this is the published reference design. If you just want to count bees, a simpler counter will do.
IN THE REPO
GOOD TO KNOW
- —All hardware, software, and tagging protocol are documented in the HardwareX paper (CC BY 4.0).
- —Bill of materials, CAD for the entrance and enclosure, tag files, code, SD card images and the build manual are on Zenodo; the latest post-processing code is on GitHub (AERS-Lab/BeeCam-AprilTag).
- —In the paper's example analysis, 21 days of data produced 675 foraging trips from tagged bees.
- —No commercial equivalent exists — the paper states this explicitly.
- —You need a colony of bees, access to the hive, and the patience to glue tiny paper tags onto individual bees; the authors tagged newly emerged bees, about 100 per colony every two weeks.
- —CC BY 4.0 licence permits commercial use.
Parts to buy
9 itemsFrom our check of the build. Exact quantities and part numbers are in the creator’s BOM.
Can I build this?
Build at your own risk. Projects involve tools, electronics and sometimes mains voltage — follow the creator’s safety notes.
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Start here
Navigation into the creator’s own docs — we don’t rewrite the guide, we route you to the source.
- 1.Read the HardwareX paper (Full hardware description, schematics, BOM, assembly instructions, and software setup are in the main text and supplementary materials.)
- 2.Check the GitHub repository for detection code(All build files and SD card images are on Zenodo (doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13227905); the latest post-processing code is on GitHub at AERS-Lab/BeeCam-AprilTag.)
- 3.Source the solar rig components first(The solar panel, 100 Ah LiFePO4 battery and MPPT charge controller are the largest block of the cost, about 780 dollars of the bill of materials.)
- 4.Practise tagging before a real deployment(The authors glued paper tags to the thorax with shellac, with the yellow line on the tag facing the bee's head. Expect your first sessions to be slow.)
KNOWN ISSUES
- The tags are 2.6 mm circles printed at 1200 DPI and must be glued precisely to the bee's thorax — printer ink bleed and misalignment both reduce detection accuracy.
- Tagging is manual work: the authors glued paper tags to the thorax with shellac, about 100 bees per colony every two weeks, and logged every ID used. Expect your first sessions to be slow and clumsy.
- Detection accuracy depends on lighting, camera focus and tag contrast, and bees still get missed: on warm days they rush through, and some crawl upside down so the tag faces away from the camera. In the paper almost half of all events could not be classified as enter or exit.
- The 3D-printed entrance sets the tunnel the bees walk through (2 inches wide by 1/4 inch high in the paper) and the camera distance (2 inches behind a translucent window). The authors tuned focal distance, field of view and entrance size together, so if you change the tunnel, camera or hive, expect to re-tune them; the published print is a starting point, not a final design.
- You need a hive with bees and permission to modify the entrance; this is not a test-bench project.
- The system logs trips, not pollen load or destination — you still need to pair this with other observations if you want to know where bees foraged.
Do I need beekeeping experience?
Yes. You are modifying a hive entrance and gluing tags onto individual bees. The paper assumes you know how to handle a colony.
How many bees can I tag?
The authors used 7,000 unique tags in one season, allocating a block of 1,000 IDs to each colony and tagging about 100 newly emerged bees per colony roughly every two weeks. The practical limit is your tagging time and the tag IDs you allocate; the paper does not say how long a tag stays on.
Can I use a different camera or a newer Pi?
The system is built around a Raspberry Pi 4 (2 GB) with the 12 MP Raspberry Pi Camera Module 3 Wide, and the ready-made SD card images are set up for that combination. Another camera may work but you would need to re-tune focus and detection. The white LED strips inside the enclosure are essential for consistent lighting.
What if I only want to count bees, not track individuals?
A simpler counter (e.g., an infrared beam break) will do that for a fraction of the cost. The tagging is only necessary if you need per-bee trip data.
How long does the battery last?
The six-camera system draws about 32 W, or 768 Wh a day. With the paper's 195 W panel and 100 Ah LiFePO4 battery it stays above 50% on sunny days, but two cloudy days in a row can drain it; the authors swapped batteries when needed and estimate at least 768 W of panel for full autonomy.
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FROM THE COMPAREE TEAM
The paper logged 675 foraging trips over 21 days of data collection. If you built this, what would you look for first: time of day patterns, trip length versus weather, or something else?
Penaloza-Aponte and colleagues, Penn State
The team needed to study foraging behaviour at the individual level — which bees leave when, and for how long — and found no commercial system that does it. They built six of these systems, installed them at three locations in Pennsylvania and three in New York from March to July 2024, and in one 21-day analysis identified 675 foraging trips. The paper was published in HardwareX as a complete hardware description.
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- Information is provided without warranty and may become outdated as projects evolve. Prices are indicative bands only — always check the creator’s parts list for current costs.
- Building and operating any project is at your own responsibility. Protective equipment, safe workshop practice and compliance with local regulations are the builder’s responsibility.
CompareeTEAM27d agoedited
Practical notes from our verification: this is a complete hardware description published in HardwareX under CC BY 4.0. The BOM, CAD, tag files, code, SD card image and manual are on Zenodo (doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13227905), and the latest post-processing code is on GitHub at AERS-Lab/BeeCam-AprilTag. The system is six Raspberry Pi 4 units with Pi Camera Module 3 Wide cameras, white LED strips, real-time clocks and a solar-plus-battery power rig. Tags are printed at 2 x 2 mm, cut to 2.6 mm circles and glued to the bees with shellac; expect your first tagging sessions to be slow. The paper also notes that the 195 W panel is not enough for consecutive cloudy days, so size the solar side generously. The paper states that no commercial analog is available. Correction (4 October 2026): we re-checked this page line by line against the project's own repository, documentation and videos, and fixed errors in earlier versions.