USDA Data Reservoir of Field Experiments with Managed Honey Bee Colonies
Between 2014 and 2022, the USDA-ARS research center in Tucson, Arizona, collected a large reservoir of data from field experiments with managed honey bee colonies. This work was carried out independently and in collaboration with other precision apiculture (PA) research programs, including the PA program at Utah State University, as well as with several commercial beekeeping operations.
About the Data Reservoir
The reservoir contains a wide variety of information, including:
- Thousands of hive frame photographs
- Multi-sensor measurements
- CSV files and spreadsheets
- Hive inspection text logs
Together, these records form one of the most comprehensive publicly available resources of managed honey bee colony data.
Our Project
Our team is exploring and curating this reservoir to make subsets available for public research and education.
The first curated dataset was released in 2024–2025 under
USDA-NIFA Award 205732:
DSFAS - Exploration and Exploitation of the 2014–2022 USDA-ARS Tucson, AZ Digital Data Reservoir of Field Experiments with Managed Honey Bee Colonies.
Access the Files
You can download the dataset here (this zip is over 9GB and may take a while to download):
Access USDA Dataset