December 10, 2020

By Lynda Kiernan, Global AgInvesting Media

Following successful trial monitoring more than 20 million honey bees worldwide, Irish bee monitoring innovator ApisProtect (Apis is the Latin word for bee) announced the U.S. launch of its commercial honey bee monitoring platform.

Founded by preeminent researchers, including CEO Dr. Fiona Edwards Murphy, ApisProtect has a critical and steadfast goal – to protect the world’s food supply by protecting the world’s bees.

The USDA has noted that bee populations in North America have been in decline since the 1940s, but it was a little more than 10 years ago when a crisis hit when thousands of hives were lost and a new disorder was termed: colony collapse disorder.

Mysteriously, worker bees would suddenly abandon a hive, leaving the queen, brood, or young bees, a few nurse bees, and full reserves of pollen and honey behind. However, a hive cannot function properly without its worker bees and would soon die.

During the 2006/2007 season, beekeepers began reporting losses of between 30 and 90 percent of their hives without apparent cause. Much scientific work has been done in an attempt to discover the root cause, but bees and their keepers are still struggling.

Compounding this issue is the fact that between 2008 and 2013, the diversity of wild bees in the U.S. also fell by 23 percent.

“The evidence is overwhelming that hundreds of the native bees we depend on for ecosystem stability, as well as pollination services worth billions of dollars, are spiraling toward extinction,” said Kelsey Kopec, a native pollinator researcher at the Center for Biological Diversity, and the author of  Pollinators in Peril: A systematic status review of North American and Hawaiian native bees released in March of last year. “It’s a quiet but staggering crisis unfolding right under our noses…”

Long Live the Queen

Traditionally, in order to gauge the health and status of their hives, beekeepers would have to rely on manual hive checks that are time-consuming and costly. The problem, however, goes deeper than time and money. Research conducted by ApisProtect found that 80 percent of these manual checks did not require any action to be taken, but would disrupt the bees and endanger the queen.

Revolutionizing this system is ApisProtect.

Headquartered in Cork, Ireland, and with a growing team in the U.S., ApisProtect is backed by a cadre of leading international venture capital investors including Finistere Ventures, Radicle Growth, Enterprise Ireland, Atlantic Bridge Capital, and the Yield Lab.

Driven by Dr. Fiona Edwards Murphy and her award-winning research, ApisProtect uses the Internet of Things (IoT) to monitor honeybee colonies via real-time hive monitoring powered by satellite-enabled sensors that are retrofitted to existing beehives. The company then applies proprietary big data and machine learning techniques to convert the raw data collected into valuable information and actionable insights.

Using this platform, commercial beekeepers can safely identify and respond to disease, pests, and other issues before significant damage has occurred. This in turn will allow for larger colonies and a reduction in hive loss.

“Our science-based honey bee monitoring technology empowers beekeepers to manage their apiaries more efficiently, reduce labor and transport costs, and focus on cultivating larger and stronger colonies,”  said Dr. Edwards Murphy, CEO, ApisProtect. “Using ApisProtect, beekeepers can generate an additional $98 of value from each hive per year.”

Stateside

During trials that monitored more than 20 million of the world’s honey bees, ApisProtect was a driver behind a range of operational improvements that resulted in greater productivity and hive numbers. These benefits, which include increased labor efficiencies of as much as 50 percent and reduced transportation costs during pollination of up to 25 percent, will now be able to be capitalized upon by beekeepers in the U.S. 

“We provide beekeepers with an instant condition report on each hive so they can identify strong hives to travel to the almond orchards,” said Pádraig Whelan Ph.D., chief science officer, ApisProtect. “This ensures beekeepers can fulfill their pollination contracts, earn bonuses, and increase productivity for growers. ApisProtect works with the beekeepers to ensure they have the strongest hives to maximize revenue from the pollination season. Critically, we give beekeepers control of their information and data, enabling them to maximize the value to their operation.”

Through its U.S. sales office, the company is now positioned to support the hive migration to California before the critical pollination period for the state’s almond orchards. Early adopters will have the ability to help tailor the technology to their specific needs for future seasons, however, pricing will depend on a variety of factors such as number of hives and location.

Those interested can watch an install of ApisProtect’s bee monitoring technology here.

– Lynda Kiernan is editor with GAI Media, and is managing editor and daily contributor for Global AgInvesting’s AgInvesting Weekly News and  Agtech Intel News, and HighQuest Group’s Oilseed & Grain News. She is also a contributor to the GAI Gazette. She can be reached at lkiernan@globalaginvesting.com.