Detection Level of Honeybee Desease: Varroosis Using a Gas Sensor Array

For humankind, honeybees are primarily important as pollinators. Fulfilling this function shall not be prevented by the uncontrolled occurrence and propagation of insects' deseases. The one particularly dangerous is varroosis, caused by the Varroa mites, external bee parasites. Currently, the detection of the desease is based on manual inspection of bee colonies. However, recently it has been shown that an instrumental approach based on gas sensors array measurements and classification is a promising alternative. In this work we investigated the detection level of varroosis by a semiconductor gas sensor array. It was shown that the classification error was smallest when distinguishing between two classes of bee colonis featured by V destructor infestation rate: above two and less or equal two.