World’s First Robotic Beekeeper on Mission to Repopulate and Protect Global Honeybee Populations

Honeybees, though tiny, play a huge role in sustaining vegetation across the
world. Without bees, the diversity and availability of fresh produce would
substantially decline — they are responsible for around 80 percent of worldwide
pollination,
with a single bee colony pollinating up to 300 flowers each day. 70 out of the
top 100 human
crops,
supplying 90 percent of the world’s nutrition, are pollinated by bees.

Despite bees’ importance in maintaining global biodiversity, their populations
have been threatened more and more by colony collapse disorder
(CCD)
— which has seen billions of worker bees, critical to the operation and survival
of a colony, leave behind their hives and their queen. Modern challenges
including pests, climate change, and pesticides are contributing factors to CCD,
creating significant stress on bee populations. Since
2006,
30+ percent of honeybee populations are declining each year.

Technological developments surrounding beekeeping have long been overlooked; the
industry has remained the same for the last 170 years, since the invention of
the first humanmade beehive. Enter commercial beekeeper Eliyah
Radzyner, who —
together with serial entrepreneur Saar
Safra — co-founded
Beewise, a startup whose robotic beehives are
promoting bee survival in the face of global warming and other modern stressors.

“The industrial revolution, digital revolution, and AI revolution all skipped
over beekeeping,” says CEO and co-founder Safra. “Beewise’s solution, the
Beehome, is the first of its kind — an
autonomous beehive with an integrated robotic beekeeper. By combining experience
in both beekeeping and technology, we have developed and brought to market a
state-of-the-art solution with proven results.”

Image credit: Beewise

The Beehome allows bees to be taken care of in real time and beekeepers to
remotely manage their hives while gaining vital access to data about their
colonies. Each Beehome houses up to 48 bee colonies — or one to two million
bees. The AI within the Beehome constantly monitors activity within the hive and
learns from the beekeepers’ actions — if a beekeeper applies a particular
treatment, the AI associates that action with specific conditions; then, if
similar conditions are detected by other devices, the robot can recommend the
same treatment. The AI monitors and learns from the entire portfolio of
Beehomes, which operates in the cloud and applies its learnings across the
portfolio.

Understanding what is happening within a colony is vital to preservation of the
bee population.

“Once there is full visibility into a colony, taking action is the easy part of
addressing climate change and modern stressors. For example, if the bees have no
forage to access and are in starvation mode, Beewise’s robot can easily feed
them. Or, if it is too warm or cold outside, the robot can easily adjust the
hive’s temperature to accommodate the bees. The data collected is the real
asset, allowing Beehomes to save bees at scale,” Safra explains. “97 percent of
what a beekeeper would do is carried out automatically and often autonomously by
the Beehome. It is as if every bee has its own personal beekeeper, 24/7.”

Beewise says its Beehomes reduce bee mortality by 80 percent, increase yields by
at least 50 percent, and eliminate ~90 percent of manual labor compared to
traditional beehives. By utilizing 24/7 monitoring and smart technology,
Beehomes automatically detect threats to a honeybee colony, such as pesticides
or the presence of parasites; and the robotic system responds by addressing the
threat in real time in the field.

“Traditional beehives do not protect bees from climate change and modern
stressors, harming the species’ survival,” Safra says. “Our goal is to replace
all the traditional hives with Beewise’s robotic Beehomes — not only to stop bee
colony collapse but also to reverse the trend and allow the population to
restore to its natural order.”

Building the self-contained, solar-powered Beehome was no simple task — unlike other types of livestock, bees
cannot be contained with fences or wires and can leave their hive many times a
day to forage. If the bees’ nests are not accommodating to their needs, they can
simply fly away and leave.

“Consequently, building a device that has robotics, computer vision, solar
panels, mobile and is secure is not enough; it also has to be comfortable for
our core customer: the bee. The level of complexity of building a device that
has to accommodate a biological model is tenfold more complex than just building
robotics or IoT,” Safra explains. “These complex little creatures are sensitive
and require a very specific set of conditions to feel ‘at home.’ Our robotic
hives have the lowest levels of swarming (when bees leave their home due to
uncomfortable conditions) than any hive in existence.”

Headquartered in Galilee with an outpost in Oakland, Calif., Beewise
recently secured $80
million in its latest
Series C funding round, which Safra says will primarily be invested in IP (R&D
to improve the devices even further), market expansion, improving its service,
and operational excellence. Having brought its Beehomes into the US, which now
hosts 24,000 hives (with plans for over a million), the company aims to expand
further into Europe and Australia.

Published Aug 8, 2022 2pm EDT / 11am PDT / 7pm BST / 8pm CEST

Scarlett Buckley

Scarlett Buckley is a London-based freelance sustainability writer with an MSc in Creative Arts & Mental Health.