An international grid of remotely-monitored hives is using artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing to analyse the health of global bee populations, and engineer lasting solutions to reverse their decline.
Pesticides, habitat loss and climate change are some of the reasons behind shrinking populations of vital pollinators.
Beekeepers have long used commercial hive sensors to track the health of individual colonies, but the World Hive Network has gone one step further by creating a ‘hive mind’, in the truest sense of the word. It links 2.5bn bees in 50,000 hives to data-crunching software. Sensors in each hive measure a range of variables including weight, temperature, humidity, sound and ambient weather.
The network is an initiative of the The World Bee Project CIC, launched eight years ago by social entrepreneur Sabiha Malik, with the aim of using AI to help address pollinator and biodiversity decline, food insecurity and climate change.
“Bees lie at the heart of the relationships that bind the natural and human worlds, and in safeguarding bees lies the means to safeguard life itself,” says The World Bee Project.
Image: Damien Tupinier
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