Machine learning predicts honeybee swarms

When honeybees are ready to establish a new colony, they initiate a coordinated procedure called swarming. For beekeepers, swarming provides an opportunity to capture the departing bees and establish a new hive. To forecast a swarm, beekeepers regularly inspect their hives for the presence of larger honeycomb cells that host developing future queens. But those regular inspections are laborious. Now Martin Bencsik of Nottingham Trent University in the UK and his colleagues are automating the process by using machine learning.