rethink sustainability
How BeeHero's 21st-century approach to beekeeping is contributing to a more sustainable food system
BeeHero is a data-driven precision pollination company combining commercial beekeeping know-how with modern technology to help build a more resilient food system. The company’s ‘smart hives’ deliver deep insights into the complex pollination behaviours of their bees, so farmers can make informed land and resource management decisions that increase crop yields and promote sustainability. We caught up with Omer Davidi, CEO and Co-Founder of BeeHero, to find out more about the company’s pioneering approach to beekeeping.
Why did you start BeeHero?
An explosion of technological innovation has combined with generations of farming experience to make the sector orders of magnitude more efficient than it was just a couple of hundred years ago. However, some of these innovations have introduced unintended negative consequences that are neither positive nor sustainable – including a steady decline in bee populations.
The vast majority of plant reproduction depends on insect-enabled cross-pollination, especially by bees – every third bite we eat relies on them. Bee pollination is, therefore, the lynchpin of global food production. The apocryphal Einstein quote which says, “If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would only have four years of life left,” may or may not be precisely accurate, but it’s clear that a decline in bee numbers poses a significant problem.
The global population is growing, and so our food systems must become more efficient if we're to produce enough for everyone to eat. One solution is simply to farm more land, but the bees upon which crops depend thrive on environmental diversity – too much farmland is as big a problem for bees as too much grassland. Today, bee mortality rates hover at around 40% annually due to sustained pressure on colonies from parasites, disease, and the impacts of pesticides and insecticides. We expect the US alone to lose about 48% of its beehives in 2022–23, and a contact in one region of France recently told me they expect to see an 80% mortality rate in the area.
When I met Itai Kanot, a second-generation commercial beekeeper, a few years ago, I was captivated by the potential of technology to preserve bee populations and optimise their pollination behaviours for a more productive and sustainable agricultural sector. Leveraging cutting-edge technology to tackle one of humanity’s most pressing challenges is among the most fulfilling endeavours one can undertake.
Your cloud-connected sensors measure a number of different things inside the hive, such as temperature, humidity, and noise. How can this information help farmers protect their bees and optimise crop pollination?
Since humanity started keeping bees in pottery vessels around 9,000 years ago, the most recent invention to transform the beekeeping profession was actually the motorised vehicle. We believe the industry is ready for another revolution, and that sensing devices combined with powerful data and analytics can deliver the change we need.
If we want to protect bees and optimise their pollination, we need to know what’s going on inside the hive. But opening a hive every day costs money and disturbs the bees, and a lot can happen in the few weeks one should ideally leave it undisturbed. With BeeHero’s cloud-connected sensors, farmers can view a wealth of valuable data that can tell them what’s going on in the hive via a connected device, so they can detect things like diseases or the death of the queen while they can still do something about it without having to regularly open the hive.
Our sensors also provide valuable information about pollination behaviours that farmers can use to optimise issues like hive placement. For instance, bees do all their pollination during the day, but at night, when they can’t forage, they dehydrate the nectar they’ve gathered to transform it into honey for storage. Analysing the amount of energy bees are utilising to make honey, knowing what crops they are foraging, helps us identify the number of flowers visited and how productive the pollination is.
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How do you get such concrete insights, like the death of the queen, from relatively abstract data?
When we first started, we quickly realised that we’d have to rely on relatively inconspicuous technologies like temperature and humidity sensors. We knew that such technologies wouldn’t disturb the bees, or the beekeepers as much as, say, a network of cameras, or scales. But we also knew it’d be much harder to establish what’s happening inside a hive from a ream of numbers than a live video feed. Moreover, leaving even unobtrusive sensors switched on can attract bee attacks, so we have to keep them in standby mode for all but the most critical periods.
Artificial intelligence has been crucial to establishing patterns in the relatively limited, abstract data we're able to gather. The process was far from straightforward – there were moments when the data would tell us the queen had died, only for us to find her alive and well a couple of days later! But after several years of work, we have identified patterns for pollination efficiency, queen death, and more.
How does all this work in practice, and what kinds of benefits can farmers expect?
Our job is to support our bees to do the job they’ve evolved to do, and we believe this will contribute to building a sustainable food system as the global population continues to grow. With that said, the case-by-case benefits of our offering will always depend on the context.
For instance, if the crops in question need fertilisers, our technology can tell farmers when to apply it so as to minimise any disruption to the behaviour of their bees. We analyse their crop fields, assign them a score to indicate how “bee-friendly” they are, and provide recommendations for improvement. In addition, we work with large companies and share research to help tackle diseases that affect crops and their pollinators.
As a general rule, crops that grow in greater densities produce more flowers and, therefore, benefit the most from pollination optimisation. This means that crop yield increases can be as low as 10–15% in some cases, while in others – such as almonds and some stone fruits – We’ve seen outputs double. We’ve even seen row crops like rape seed, which are generally considered to be self-pollinators, produce 60% more following the introduction of our bees.
Based on controlled crop trials and published scientific data, enhancing the pollination behaviours of bees can deliver sustainable crop yield increases of 30% on average – a significant contribution to global food security. What makes BeeHero unique is our technology and analytics, which introduce predictability and precision to this important process, allowing a more efficient pollination process.
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As BeeHero continues to develop its technology and analytics, what new insights or benefits might you be able to unlock?
In addition to increasing the size of crop yields, increased cross-pollination also seems to improve their quality in ways we’re only beginning to understand. For example, depending on the crop, we have seen improvements in shelf life, oil content, and sugar content, all of which can improve the quality of the final product. More pollination may also improve the nutritional composition of some crops, like canola and sunflower.
As we continue to monitor our 200,000+ hives, We’ve even seen patterns suggesting that farmers may one day be able to use our bees to predict the weather. For instance, a few hours before it rains, we see that our bees return to their colonies, which is important for their survival.
We’re still researching these correlations; so, for now, they remain as promising as they are fascinating.
In the six years since you founded BeeHero in 2017, it has already become the world’s largest pollination optimisation company. What’s next?
BeeHero is continuing to expand on multiple fronts. Geographically, we started in the USA and have already expanded to Australia. Crop-wise, we have most recently expanded into cherries, blueberries, and sunflowers. We are also keen to expand our range of technologies to field sensors, which will enable us to obtain even more valuable intelligence in regard to what our bees are doing outside the hive – especially around particularly valuable crops.
Read also: Tiny and vital – how we must save bees to save our crops
In the long term, we want to produce pollination insights for anyone who needs them – not strictly farmers. For instance, because pollination activity has significant implications for the potential output of crop farms, such insights would be invaluable to anyone who needs to assess the risks associated with a particular farm, such as insurers, investors, and other players.
It’s telling how fast things moved. We believe in what we do and we recognise that we’ve been fortunate. For example, education was not something we needed to do in the market: both commercial beekeepers and farmers were already informed of the benefits of better pollination. Our approach helps them achieve that goal in a way that removes many of the difficulties involved, so the strong adoption rate makes sense.
We have more work ahead of us. As we continue to develop our technology, analytics, and insights, we’re excited to see how else BeeHero can help farmers and other players create and maintain a more sustainable global food system.
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This document is issued by Bank Lombard Odier & Co Ltd or an entity of the Group (hereinafter “Lombard Odier”). It is not intended for distribution, publication, or use in any jurisdiction where such distribution, publication, or use would be unlawful, nor is it aimed at any person or entity to whom it would be unlawful to address such a document. This document was not prepared by the Financial Research Department of Lombard Odier.
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