Pollination is crucial to life on the planet. Bees and other pollinators have thrived for millions of years, ensuring food security and nutrition, and maintaining biodiversity and vibrant ecosystems for plants, humans and the bees themselves. Globally, three out of four crops producing fruits and seeds for human consumption depend on pollinators for sustained production, yield and quality. Pollination is also vital for foraging crops, such as field beans and clover, used to feed livestock for the meat industry. Recent decades have seen heightened concern about honey bee colony mortality (Annual Colony Loss – ACL) across the United States, Asia and Europe. The seemingly unpredictable loss of bee colonies exacerbates the shortage of pollinators leading to concerns that pollination deficits may limit crop production. Indeed, it was shown that the quantity and quality of pollination services have declined through time. The main factors protecting bee colonies are beekeeper´s experience and practices. Beekeeping has barely changed in the past 150 years and is still based on traditional manual labour-intensive work practices which have not been modernized.
There is currently no truly effective solution to improve beekeeping practices for the benefit of bees, beekeepers and environment. BeeWise has developed BeeHome, a modular commercial AI-powered-apiary composed of hardware and software that fully automates beekeeping and honey production while optimizing pollination. It is anticipated that BeeHome will minimize the manual labour typical of beekeeping activities while significantly improving beehives’ health and safety.
The overall objectives optimise the hardware and software components of the platform and perform the technology validation activities. BeeWise aims to improve beekeeping practices and to secure the survival of bees and crops which depend on them.
