Greenhouse-scale proximity-RFID system enabling flower-visit metrics for bumblebee pollination studies under climate change

Bumblebee pollination is critical for crop production, yet monitoring their visitation patterns at crop scale with flower-level resolution remains a major challenge. This study presents a novel proximity radio-frequency identification (RFID) system designed to quantify pollination activity in a greenhouse environment. A dense network of 42 readers and 336 custom ring-shaped antennas was deployed over 1200 m 2 to enable continuous detection of 154 tagged bumblebees during an eight-week campaign. More than 1.2 million detections were processed into 14,288 discrete visits, including their duration and frequency, allowing detailed characterization of pollinator activity. The system was demonstrated in a tomato crop under both control and simulated heat-stress conditions, showing robust performance and the ability to capture shifts in pollination activity in response to environmental stressors. To our knowledge, this work provides the first greenhouse-scale RFID framework capable of resolving visit-level pollination events, offering new opportunities to study crop–pollinator interactions under different scenarios.