FAIRHiveFrames-1K: A Public FAIR Dataset of 1,265 AnnotatedHive Frame Images with Preliminary YOLOv8/YOLOv11Baselines

FAIRHiveFrames-1K is a publicly available dataset of 1,265 manually annotated hive frame images designed to support research in precision apiculture, computer vision, and AI-enabled agricultural monitoring systems (Agriculture 4.0).

The following journal article provides the scientific metadata for FAIRHiveFrames-1K, documents our image capture
and annotation methods and FAIR alignment, gives the details of tuning YOLOv8 and YOLOv11 on FAIRHiveFrames-1K to generate preliminary conservative baselines. 

Kulyukin, V., Hill, R. and Kulyukin, A. (2026) FAIRHiveFrames-1K: A Public FAIR Dataset of 1265 Annotated Hive Frame Images with Preliminary YOLOv8 and YOLOv11 Baselines. Sensors, 26 (8), 2518.  https://doi.org/10.3390/s26082518

The dataset consists of 1920×1080 PNG images derived from a longitudinal USDA–ARS multi-sensor research reservoir (2013–2022). Each image is annotated with bounding boxes for seven biologically meaningful categories:

- CappedHoneyCell
- CappedWorkerBroodCell
- EmptyCombCell
- PollenCell
- UncappedNectarCell
- UncappedWorkerLarvaCell
- BeeHiveFrame

In total, the dataset contains 124,669 annotated regions of interest. Annotation was performed using a consensus-based protocol involving two annotators and domain-informed verification.

FAIRHiveFrames-1K is distributed with:
- PNG images (lossless format)
- YOLO plaintext annotations
- PascalVOC XML annotations
- Fixed train/validation splits
- Training and tuning scripts
- Pretrained YOLOv8 and YOLOv11 baseline weights

The dataset is designed to support reproducible benchmarking under realistic hardware constraints and to facilitate further research in dense small-object detection.

DATA ACCESS

Due to file size constraints, the full dataset is hosted on Utah State University Box
and can be accessed at:

https://usu.box.com/shared/static/kzmjdnzesdf4ssg5zpo5w6xiyycjz7y3.zip

This Zenodo record serves as a DOI-registered metadata entry for citation, discovery,
and FAIR compliance.

For file integrity verification, the SHA256 checksum of the dataset archive
MDPI_Sensors_FAIRHiveFrames_1K.zip is:

280ad37fda41a90d19b79b9339da49504685d83c3f57a7c2f7b8d44578e0ef15.

VERSION

This record corresponds to:

FAIRHiveFrames-1K Version 1.0 (frozen December 31, 2025)

Future dataset expansions will follow a size-based versioning scheme
(e.g., FAIRHiveFrames-2K, FAIRHiveFrames-5K).

SOURCE

The dataset is derived from the USDA-ARS Tucson, Arizona research reservoir of multi-year field experiments on managed honey bee colonies. 

LICENSE

This dataset is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.