How smart tech is transforming beekeeping

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An Israeli tech start-up is hoping to help beekeepers maintain their bee colonies with a smart touch. Using sensors and real-time data analysis, the tech allows keepers to track the health of their hives and prevent die-offs that are blamed on a combination of parasites, pesticides, starvation and climate change. Beekeeping is an age-old occupation that relies on tried and tested techniques and the expertise of the beekeeper for success. Honeybees around the world are dying off in large numbers, a phenomenon that could have ripple effects on the food supply chain and the entire ecosystem. So even this ancient activity is adopting technology to take better care of bee colonies. Doreet Avni has been beekeeping for 30 years. She’s now part of BeeHero, a Tel Aviv and California-based company that is spearheading that change. “We just had to manually open every individual hive, look for a queen, look for the brood, see that everything is ok. Same for beekeepers. And now you can just get an app and you get all the information on the app,” she says. BeeHero uses sensors inside the hive to analyze the colony’s health which it then transmits to the cloud and to the beekeeper, giving them real-time insights that could help save a struggling community of bees. “With our technology, we can see very early if something is wrong in the colony. So for example in the case of pesticide or case of queen loss or any other problem that the colony has, the beekeeper can come and do something very quickly. Otherwise, they can come three four five weeks too late,” says Avni. The beekeeper gets this information directly to their phone or computer and, through artificial intelligence and machine learning, they receive an outline of the state of the hives and are flashed with alerts if there is a problem. BeeHero says that saves the beekeeper crucial time and makes finding any problems easier and more efficient. This article was provided by The Associated Press.