The technology could help beekeepers reduce short-term losses, but it doesn’t address long-term...
The intensity of the work can make it difficult for beekeepers to spot the signs of an ailing hive early enough to prevent its collapse.
Over the past few years, several companies have developed sensors to automatically monitor environmental conditions in hives and alert beekeepers to potential problems.
Between April 2020 and April 2021, small- and large-scale beekeeping operations in the U.S. lost an estimated 45.5 percent of colonies-the second highest loss rate since records began 15 years ago-according to a preliminary report released by the nonprofit Bee Informed Partnership in June.
Beekeepers are paid up to $200 per hive during a crop's flowering period, according to research published in 2019.
Several beekeeping operations have partnered with tech companies to test hive-monitoring sensors.
Hive data collected by ApisProtect, an Ireland-based company, indicate that the sensors halve the time needed for beekeepers to inspect hives, allowing them to focus on the ones that need more attention, says ApisProtect's head of marketing Aoife O'Mahony.
The technology also helps beekeepers identify weaker hives, which reduces vehicle trips to the bee yard for manual checks of colonies and cuts costs associated with replacing weak hives, O'Mahony says.
BeeHero, a Fresno, Calif.-based start-up, is also developing sensors to track bee activity in hives rented to farmers.
The sensors help him look for correlations among hive events, such as changes in bees' foraging activity, and weather events, crop flower blooming cycles or pesticide use.
Essentially, using sensors and monitors may save beekeepers time and resources-but doing so likely will not improve conditions much for honeybees themselves, says Ernesto Guzman, director of the Honey Bee Research Center at the University of Guelph in Ontario.