# The Importance of Context Awareness in Acoustics-Based Automated Beehive Monitoring
## 2 Materials and Methods  
### Data Acquisition  
In this study, 10 beehives and 1 empty hive were monitored continuously over a three-month period on a rooftop apiary located in downtown Montreal, Quebec (Canada). These hives were placed on wooden pallets (two hives per pallet) in a row facing southeast, with the empty hive placed by itself. This location facilitated ease of access to a power supply from a wall outlet on the outside of the building. Each hive comprised one brood chamber and one or two honey supers using 10-frame standard Langstroth boxes (with a maximum of three boxes), with a multimodal sensor located on top of the center frame of the bottom brood box to record the internal hive temperature and humidity ([PERSON], Nectar Technologies Inc, Canada [59]), as shown in Figure 0(a). and also a microphone beside that, as shown in Figure 0(b). All hives came from four frame nucs that were purchased and installed in May 2021.  
The nectar apiculturalists did not equalize the hive populations in order to collect data on a variety of population sizes, as the prediction of beehive strength (a correlate of population size) was one of the main goals. At the beginning of the experiment, each hive contained a different number of (full) frames of bees with a minimum of six frames of bees for a beehive with one brood box, and a maximum of 20 frames of bees for a beehive with one brood box and one honey super. As the colony populations increased, additional honey supers were added. Therefore, in our apiary, the maximum number of boxes and  
Figure 1: Location of the (**a**) temperature and humidity sensor placed on top of the middle frame of the first brood chamber and (**b**) microphone placed next to it.  
frames of bees were 3 and 30, respectively. Data were recorded continuously over the months of August, September, and October, 2021. The multi-modal data comprise the average temperature and humidity readings every 15 min, and a 15-min audio segment every 30 min, with a sampling rate of 48 kHz. Every two weeks, the hives were manually inspected to measure the strength of the hives (i.e., the number of frames of bees covered by least 70% [60]), to verify the presence of a laying queen, as well as to report any additional observations related to the colony activity.  
Moreover, local external temperatures, humidity, and rainfall amounts levels were obtained from the Environment and Climate Change Canada website ([[https://climate.weather.gc.ca/](https://climate.weather.gc.ca/)]([https://climate.weather.gc.ca/](https://climate.weather.gc.ca/)), accessed on 1 June 2022.). A representative example of a 24 h snapshot of the changes in internal/external temperature and humidity levels, as well as the audio intensity and root mean square (RMS) value, is shown in Figure 2. The plots are for a strong and healthy colony in August with one brood chamber and two honey supers with a total of 30 frames of bees (covered with at least 70% of bees). As can be seen, audio power increases during the day, especially during periods in which external temperatures were increasing and external humidity levels decreasing, thus suggesting increased foraging activity and thermohygrometric regulation of the colony.