In an attempt to learn more about why honeybees are prone to swift, large-scale die-offs, an international group of researchers are aiming to outfit thousands with microchip backpacks.

According to BBC News, the researchers are seeking 10,000 healthy honeybees to carry tiny sensors on their backs. The individual sensors communicate with a receiver placed in the bees' home hive.

"The micro-sensors that we are using help us to ask different questions that we couldn't ask before because we've never really been able to quantify the behavior of bees both out in the environment and in their hives," Gary Fitt, science director at Australia's national science agency's (CSIRO) health and biosecurity division, told Agence France Press.

Honeybees are increasingly falling to "colony collapse disorder," which is a phenomenon where a large number of adults die off at once. Other contributors that have scientists worried include pesticides, the warming climate, and mites called Verroa.

"What we are gathering with the sensors is environmental information from where the bees have been," Fitt, told AFP. "It tells us about their changes in behavior -- how often and how long they're foraging, whether they're feeding, whether they're collecting pollen, what they're doing in the hives.

"We can then see if we can interpret those changes to tell us how they are responding to different stresses."

Colony collapse disorder is still a mystery and it is threatening a species of insects highly important to agriculture.

"In some parts of the world, a healthy hive of bees can be like clockwork one day, and then every single bee is dead the very next day, and we have no idea why," Paulo de Souza, CSIRO's science leader, told BBC News. "It's happening so frequently that it's now a syndrome called colony collapse disorder, and no scientist working alone would be able to solve this."