Commercial beekeepers and researchers increasingly use small survey drones to scout candidate apiary sites before ever setting a hive stand down. A drone flying a lawnmower (boustrophedon) pattern at a fixed altitude captures overlapping photos that get stitched into a map; a near-infrared-aware camera or post-processed imagery yields NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index), a proxy for how much healthy, flowering forage surrounds a site.
NDVI compares reflectance in the red and near-infrared bands — healthy, chlorophyll-rich plants absorb red light for photosynthesis but strongly reflect near-infrared, so NDVI values approach +1 over lush blooming forage and drop toward 0 or below over bare soil, tarmac and open water.
A survey drone flies a lawnmower pattern over a 3D landscape, revealing an NDVI forage-quality map swath by swath and scoring candidate apiary sites as it goes.
Flight altitude trades ground sample distance against camera footprint width, side overlap sets how tightly survey lines are spaced, and NDVI turns raw imagery into a go/no-go forage signal for each candidate hive stand.
Set altitude, speed and overlap, then watch the drone map the field. Switch to the NDVI heatmap to see forage quality in colour, and adjust the threshold to see which hive-stand markers pass.
NDVI compares red and near-infrared reflectance — healthy, flowering forage reflects strongly in the near-infrared, so a real precision-agriculture drone survey can flag good bee forage before a single hive is moved on site.