Indonesia is one of the world’s largest oil palm producers, making effective and stable pollination essential for long-term productivity. At the Indonesian Oil Palm Research Institute (IOPRI), researchers are focused on understanding how pollination systems function in real plantation environments—and how they can be strengthened. Mahardika, one of IOPRI’s lead researchers, has been conducting a long-term field study aimed at improving pollination resilience in oil palm plantations.
The Challenge: Monitoring Pollination Activity in Real Plantation Conditions
Understanding Pollinator Behavior in Oil Palm Plantations
This two-year research project examines the potential role of Tetragonula laeviceps, a species of stingless bee, in oil palm plantations. Although stingless bees are not naturally present in oil palm ecosystems, the study investigates whether they can function as compatible and complementary pollinators alongside the primary pollinator, Elaeidobius kamerunicus. In addition to pollination performance, the research also considers the feasibility of stingless bee cultivation as a supplementary income source for smallholder farmers.
The Research Goal: Building More Resilient Pollination Strategies
Exploring Complementary Pollination Methods for Sustainable Oil Palm Production
The study was initiated in response to a noticeable decline in the activity of Elaeidobius kamerunicus, which was introduced to Indonesia approximately 40 years ago and has since served as the primary pollinator for oil palm. Researchers hypothesize that long-term factors, such as inbreeding depression, may be affecting its effectiveness. The main purpose of the research is to explore alternative or complementary pollination strategies that can enhance resilience and ensure sustainable oil palm production.
Left to right: Paisal Mizra, Permadi, Mahardika Gama, Windra Priawandiputra, Prof. Rika Raffiudin, and Genesa.
The Solution: Using Time Lapse Cameras for Long-Term Field Observation
Why Brinno Time Lapse Cameras Were Chosen for Pollination Research
While reviewing academic literature, I came across a study titled “Long-term time-lapse video provides near-complete records of floral visitation,” published in the Journal of Pollination Ecology. The paper demonstrated how time-lapse video could capture comprehensive and continuous records of pollinator activity over long periods—something that is extremely difficult to achieve through direct human observation alone.
Check out the original thesis using Brinno time lapse camera ▶️▶️https://www.pollinationecology.org/index.php/jpe/article/view/340/115
That study clearly showed the value of time-lapse cameras for long-term pollination research. Once we realized how effectively this approach could support field data collection, adopting a Brinno time-lapse camera became an obvious choice for our own study.
How did you use the Brinno time-lapse camera?
Stingless bee hives were introduced into oil palm plantations, and four Brinno time-lapse cameras were deployed to monitor activity at hive entrances and on oil palm flowers. Each camera recorded approximately 10 hours per day, from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM, capturing daily foraging behavior. Although the cameras operated autonomously, researchers remained on-site throughout the day mainly to prevent vandalism. The non-intrusive nature of the cameras ensured that bee behavior was recorded naturally without interference.
How did you analyze the time-lapse video?
Using the Brinno video player, we extracted still images from the recorded footage. Over two months of recording, this resulted in approximately 70 GB of data, with images captured at 2-second intervals.
A team of three technicians, sometimes assisted by students or interns, manually counted the number of bees entering and exiting the hives across thousands of images. Analyzing just one day of footage from a single camera required around five days of work, making the process highly labor-intensive. We are currently exploring AI and machine learning approaches to automate this analysis in future studies.
The Results: How Time Lapse Imaging Supports Agricultural Research
Long-Term Imaging Reveals Pollination Patterns and Future Research Potential
The time-lapse data confirmed that stingless bees actively visited oil palm flowers and contributed to pollination. The recordings also revealed clear diurnal foraging patterns, with peak activity occurring around midday. Brinno time-lapse cameras proved reliable for long-term deployment in tropical field conditions and enabled continuous, non-intrusive monitoring that would have been difficult to achieve otherwise.
Looking ahead, this research demonstrates the value of time-lapse imaging in pollination and insect behavior studies. Future work will focus on improving analytical efficiency through automation and expanding the use of time-lapse monitoring in broader environmental and agricultural research contexts.
