How robotic hives and AI are lowering the risk of bee colony collapse
The US has observed a startling uptick in the number of bee colonies dying off since the mid-2000s.
Robotic hives are helping cut down losses as they are able to collect data and analyse the health of bees in real time.
Some companies are developing vaccines to protect bees against disease.
For climate change news and analysis, go to News24 Climate Future.
Lifting up the hood of a Beewise hive feels more like you're getting ready to examine the engine of a car than visit with a few thousand pollinators.
The unit - dubbed a BeeHome - is an industrial upgrade from the standard wooden beehives, all clad in white metal and solar panels. Inside sits a high-tech scanner and robotic arm powered by artificial intelligence. Roughly 300 000 of these units are in use across the US, scattered across fields of almond, canola, pistachios and other crops that require pollination to grow.
It's not exactly the romantic vision of a beehive or beekeeper lodged in the cultural consciousness, but then that's not what matters; keeping bees alive does. And Beewise's units do that dramatically better than the standard hive, providing constant insights on colony health and the ability to provide treatment should it start to falter.
The US has observed a startling uptick in the number of die-offs since the mid-2000s as beekeepers have struggled to keep pace with the rise of disease-carrying mites, climate extremes and other stressors that can wipe out colonies. That's endangering billions of dollars in crops from almonds to avocados that rely on the pollinators. This past year saw the worst colony losses on record.
Beewise has raised nearly $170 million, including a $50 million Series D earlier this month, and it has a plan to change the industry.
AI and robotics are able to replace '90% of what a beekeeper would do in the field,' said Beewise Chief Executive Officer and co-founder Saar Safra. The question is whether beekeepers are willing to switch out what's been tried and true equipment.
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Ultimately, the fate of humans is tied to that of bees. Roughly 75% of crops require pollinators, with nuts and fruits particularly dependent. While other species of bees and insects can play a role, they can't replace honeybees.
'There would essentially be no crop without the bees,' said Zac Ellis, the senior director of agronomy at OFI, a global food and ingredient seller.
The beehive hasn't seen much technological innovation in 170 years. The Langstroth hive, named after the American reverend who patented it in 1852, is a simple wooden box with frames that can house the queen and her worker bees, larvae and honey.
'Langstroth hives are easy to work with, break down, build up, manipulate frames, make splits' and move, said Priya Chakrabarti Basu, a Washington State University bee researcher.
These boxes are the backbone of the agriculture industry and the high-value crops that are heavily reliant on the 2.5 million commercial hives that crisscross the US on semi-trailers. Beekeepers with thousands of hives will travel from as far away as Florida to provide pollination services for California's $3.9 billion almond crop in spring before moving on to other states and crops.
'Almonds are one of the largest pollination events in the world,' said Ellis, who uses Beewise's hives on 30% of the acres he manages. 'Typically, a grower needs two hives per acre,' each with up to 40 000 bees.
Pollinating the 10 000 acres of almonds, walnuts and pistachios he oversees requires millions of bees doing the brunt of the pollination work.
The number of hives and demand have created a problem, though: Beekeepers are only able to check on their colonies' health every week or two. But a growing number of threats to bees means entire colonies can be wiped out or weakened past the point of no return in just a few days.
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Toxic pesticides, a changing climate and a sharp uptick in the invasive, disease-transmitting varroa mite since the 1980s have contributed to the rise of what's known as colony collapse disorder. The exact role each of these issues plays in wiping out colonies is unclear, but they are also likely interacting with each other to take a toll.
'You are rarely going to find a bee who is only, for example, stressed by a mite or a bee who's stressed by a disease only or a bee who's only stressed by poor nutrition,' Chakrabarti Basu said. 'It is always a combination.'
The impacts, though, are clear. From the 12-month period starting last April, more than 56% of commercial colonies were wiped out, according to the Apiary Inspectors of America. Beekeepers have taken a major economic hit as a result: Between last June and March, colony losses cost beekeepers an estimated $600 million, according to the Honey Bee Health Coalition.
Robotic hives
While a new hive design alone isn't enough to save bees, Beewise's robotic hives help cut down on losses by providing a near-constant stream of information on colony health in real time - and give beekeepers the ability to respond to issues. Equipped with a camera and a robotic arm, they're able to regularly snap images of the frames inside the BeeHome, which Safra likened to an MRI. The amount of data they capture is staggering.
Each frame contains up to 6 000 cells where bees can, among other things, gestate larvae or store honey and pollen. A hive contains up to 15 frames and a BeeHome can hold up to 10 hives, providing thousands of datapoints for Beewise's AI to analyse.
While a trained beekeeper can quickly look at a frame and assess its health, AI can do it even faster, as well as take in information on individual bees in the photos. Should AI spot a warning sign, such as a dearth of new larvae or the presence of mites, beekeepers will get an update on an app that a colony requires attention. The company's technology earned it a BloombergNEF Pioneers award earlier this year.
'There's other technologies that we've tried that can give us some of those metrics as well, but it's really a look in the rearview mirror,' Ellis said. 'What really attracted us to Beewise is their ability to not only understand what's happening in that hive, but to actually act on those different metrics.'
That includes administering medicine and food as well as opening and closing vents to regulate temperature or protect against pesticide spraying. Safra noted that after two hurricanes hit Florida last year, BeeHomes in the state were still operational while many wooden hives were destroyed.
That durability and responsiveness has Ellis convinced on expanding their use. Today, BeeHomes are on 30% of his acres, but he said within three years, they're aiming for 100% coverage. Whether other growers and beekeepers are as keen to make the switch remains to be seen, though, given nearly two centuries of loyalty to the Langstroth design.
The startup wants to more than triple the number of BeeHomes in use, reaching 1 million in three years.
'We're in a race against time,' Safra said. 'We might have the best product on planet earth in 15 years, but it doesn't matter' if there aren't any bees left.
Ellis likened the hives to a Ritz-Carlton for pollinators. The five-star stay appears to suit bees well: Beewise says its units - which it leases to provide pollination services at what it says are market rates - have seen colony losses of around 8%. That's a major drop compared to the average annual loss rate of more than 40%, according to Apiary Inspectors of America, a group that tracks colony health.
'The asset is the bees, that's the revenue-generating asset,' said Safra, noting that losing more than 40% of those assets makes it hard for businesses to cover labour to maintain hives, trailers to transport them and other fixed costs.
Beewise expects to have $100 million in revenue this year, and Safra said it's a year away from profitability. The company declined to share the valuation for its Series D.
READ | Austria trials DNA testing to uncover honey fraud
It has competition in the bee-saving technology realm. Some companies like Dalan Animal Health are developing vaccines to protect bees against disease. BeeHero and Beeflow (sensing a pattern?) are among those that provide sensors for monitoring health in hives and fields. Both can help improve outcomes at Langstroth hives, but they still require regular beekeeper maintenance.
Chakrabarti Basu from Washington State and her colleagues are also working on using AI to detect bees entering hives. 'The more data sets we can give, the better it'll be trained,' she said. 'Pattern recognition - it could be monitoring a brood frame, it could be looking at anything for estimating colony health or any aspect of colony health - I think AI will probably get better at it.'
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