WebBee
A platform for a Brazilian information
network on bees.
Inter-American Workshop on Environmental
Data Access
3-6 March 2004 – Campinas - Brazil
Universidade de São Paulo
• Antonio Mauro Saraiva
– Escola Politécnica/ Agricultural Automation Lab
• Vera Lucia Imperatriz Fonseca
– Instituto de Biociências / BeeLab
outline
WebBee:
From instrumentation to an
information network
Start: instrumentation
• in 1999, research on flight activity of
stingless bees
• focus on automatic data acquisition
– to get more and better data
– to free the researchers from some time
consuming and error-prone activities .
Bee hives monitored for
• Air temperature
• Air humidity
• Bee flux: “Bee detector”
– I.R. emitter-detector pair
a web-based monitoring system
16:14:00
15:15:00
14:16:00
13:17:00
12:18:00
11:19:00
10:20:00
09:21:00
08:22:00
07:23:00
06:24:00
05:25:00
04:26:00
03:27:00
02:28:00
01:29:00
00:30:00
23:31:00
22:32:00
21:33:00
20:34:00
19:35:00
18:36:00
17:37:00
Bee count:
flight activity concentrated in the morning
50
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
A step ahead: an information system
• Knowledge and information on bees need to be
– organized, preserved, shared, published(!)
• Target audience
– scientists, beekeepers, students, teachers, policy
makers, agricultural producers…
• Increase public awareness on the importance and uses of
pollinators
– in Portuguese and other languages
WebBee: information system
• Contents:
•
•
•
•
•
Bee species data: biology, taxonomy, distribution,
Hives, equipment & numerical data
Beekeeping, plants visited
Bibliography
Information source: Intellectual Property
– Dynamic web pages: database
– Multimedia: texts, images, videos
• Web–based: easy access and sharing
WebBee
Database – Species catalog
•images and texts
WebBee
Database – Weather station (at IB – USP, São Paulo)
graphics and table
WebBee
Database of Bibliography
Documents: description and files
(PDF; DOC, etc)
WeB
Bee
Replicate WebBee
• Do other groups have similar needs and
problems?

• Does a single group have enough data to
populate the system?

• How much time would it take?

• Do they have other data?

WebBee - a network
• Groups cooperate on providing data
– Species information
– Experimental data / weather stations
– By region, species, family…
• Distributed Effort
– less work for each
– Each is part of solution
WeB
Bee
WebBee - a network
Important issues:
• Intellectual property
– Contents: texts, photos, etc  author
– neutral domain: www.webbee.org.br
• WebBee: consortium
– partners
– credit
– management
WeB
Bee
Status
• Centralized database
• Remote data-entry
• Other features:
– plants visited (names, few images)
– pollen characteristics
– 5 groups (4 bee groups)
Participants:
WeB
Bee
BeeLab – Instituto de Biociências da USP
Agricultural Automation Lab – Escola
Politécnica - USP
Embrapa Amazônia Oriental
BeeLab - Empresa Baiana de Desenvolvimento
Agrícola – EBDA
Universidade Est. de Feira de Santana - UEFS
Brazilian Pollinators Initiative (BPI)
website
• events
• publications
• timeline
• activities
What is next ?
WeB
Bee
• Improve content:
– populate database
– other groups
– other languages
• Data validation / referee
• Interoperability/interconnection with
other information systems
– DiGIR
– Partnership with CRIA
Visit us at:
http://www.webbee.org.br
Thank you !