Bee Counted – an Intelligent System for Counting Honeybees in Images and Videos

Honeybees and other pollinating insects are of vital importance to both the agricultural industry and the wider ecosystem, but they have been in serious decline over recent years. The spread of parasites and predators such as the varroa mite and the Asian hornet create additional threats to the beneficial species. Hence, monitoring the health and well-being of benign insects and the prevalence and location of pests becomes of great importance. In this paper, we describe the use of image processing and machine learning approaches to identify and count honeybees in both still images and videos, with a view to monitoring the activity and health of bees close to a hive. Possible extensions of the work to identify and monitor parasites, predators and other species are also discussed.