The Prototype Biodiversity Digital Twin (pDT) for Honey Bees is an advanced pDT tool that has been designed to assess the viability and productivity of honey bee colonies in various landscapes and under different management and climate-change scenarios. Using the BEEHAVE model, the pDT simulates foraging, population dynamics, and Varroa mite infestation of honey bee colonies.
The pDT interface, developed using R Shiny, offers a user-friendly platform where users can specify hive coordinates and modify model parameters and floral resource settings. Then the interface provides visual outputs such as the number of adult bees, honey production, and flight time. Users can simulate colony dynamics for specific locations and compare results with real-world data.
The honeybee prototype Digital Twin is primarily for beekeepers and researchers who want to model how different locations, beekeeping practices and floral resources will change honeybee vitality. We are still in the testing and calibration phase, but once this has been finished the tool can be used to assess the honeybee friendliness of landscapes and could be therefore a tool for land use decision making.
In this tutorial you will:
- learn how the considered floral resources will affect honeybee vitality by choosing different locations for the colony in the landscape. The user can also change the flowering period of the different crop types and their nectar and pollen content.
- learn how decisions in the beekeeping (control of mites by arcaracides, drone brood removal, honey harvest) will affect the population dynamics by changing the respective parameters on the dashboard.
To use the tool no prior scientific knowledge is needed. Some jargon is however helpful in order to understand the role of “mites” which are disease vectors for honey bees.