BIG DATA FOR BEES

With global bee populations on the decline, we venture inside the hive to see how innovative technology is changing the future of beekeeping.

- TIANA CLINE

WE HAVE A SERIOUS PROBLEM – bees are dying off. Beekeepers are struggling to keep their hives healthy and thriving. In fact, more than 40 per cent of bee colonies are being lost each year in the US, a mysterious phenomenon scientists are calling colony collapse disorder. Bees are vital for most of the food that we eat. A world without bees could affect a third of the world’s crops, putting the global economy into disarray.

‘One in every three bites of food we take on any given day was probably helped along by a bee somewhere,’ says Jon Hoekstra of the World Wildlife Fund. Luckily, there’s a lot of buzz around innovative technology such as sensors, artificial intelligence, machine learning and big data that could bring us closer to exploring and understanding bee health.

One exciting project is The World Bee Project’s Global Hive Network (GHN), the first globally coordinated honeybee monitoring programme. The hives have sensors that collect data such as ambient temperature (outside of the hive), brood temperature (around the frame in the hive where the queen is laying eggs), humidity, rainfall and acoustic data – the noise or ‘hum’ that bees make.

‘The real “smart” bit is what happens when those hives are connected to GHN. By pulling all the information that is coming from hives into one big global database, GHN can generate new insights about bee health and its relationship with weather patterns, diseases, parasites, predator species and pesticides,’ explains Sabiha Malik, executive president of The World Bee Project. The goal is that the resource of data is made available to beekeepers, farmers, researchers, governments and other stakeholders, so they can work together to help protect bees, and our planet.