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From Hive Sensors to Environmental DNA: Toward a Systems Biology Framework for Honeybee-Based Early Warning of Colony and Ecosystem Health

Honeybees (Apis mellifera) serve as biological sentinels because their foraging behavior links colony health to environmental conditions. This review synthesizes advances in precision beekeeping, environmental DNA metabarcoding, exposomics, and artificial intelligence to propose the Honeybee-Based Early Warning System (H-BEWS), a unified framework that integrates digital sensors, molecular and chemical monitoring, and ecological data into a predictive early warning system for both colony and ecosystem health. By linking anomalies detected by hive sensors to targeted molecular and chemical analyses, H-BEWS enables proactive interventions and environmental surveillance. Challenges include sensor standardization, data integration, AI validation, and equitable access for small-scale beekeepers.

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Publication details

Authors
Zunair Ahsan, Faouzi Haouala, Mokhtar Rejili
Organizations
🇨🇳 Yangzhou University🇸🇦 Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University
Year
2026
Type
Journal

Relevancy to Gratheon

H-BEWS provides an architectural roadmap for extending Gratheon's telemetry from threshold alerts to evidence-driven, multimodal risk assessment. Its staged approach is practical: continuous weight, temperature, humidity, acoustic, and activity signals can identify anomalies, while targeted molecular or chemical tests can explain them. The review also highlights product requirements that matter for Gratheon, including sensor standardization, interoperable data, validated multimodal models, uncertainty-aware alerts, and linking every warning to an actionable management decision.