Bee Vis: A Comprehensive Honey Bee Data Visualization, Exploration, and Analysis System

Honey bees play an important role in pollinating major crops and fruits across the world. Unfortunately, in recent years, many honey bee colonies have been lost due to various causes that, at some point, were referred to as the Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Some research, including the Appalachian Multi-Purpose Apiary Systems (AppMAIS) have acquired a large amount of data such as audio and video recordings as well as humidity, temperature, weight, and genetic data from honey beehives to determine the health of their bees. The amount of data produced by AppMAIS is a good example of Big Data, which is simply impossible to analyze with traditional computing approaches. Such analysis requires sophisticated visualization and exploratory tools to study honey bee behavior successfully and the environmental factors affecting them. This paper will provide details on the design, implementation, and application of a comprehensive visualization system called BeeVis, which has been developed as part of the AppMAIS project for visualizing, exploring, and analyzing honey bee data for 29 hives in the Western Region of North Carolina. BeeVis has assisted us in gaining significant knowledge about the health of the AppMAIS hives. A significant contribution of BeeVis in our research is the ability to provide options for comparison of our hives at different development stages.