Beehome (robotic hives)

2022: Announcement of robotic hives

On May 18, 2022, Beewise introduced the world's first robotic beehives, which are designed to reduce mortality rates amid the growing threat of extinction of many bee species around the world.

We are losing colonies of honey bees at an unprecedented rate around the world. Only 40 years ago, the annual colony loss rate was only 3%. Today it is more than 35%. When this figure exceeds 50%, the world will not be able to support the bee population, "says Saar Safra, CEO and co-founder of Beewise, an Israeli startup that decided to save the bees.

Beehome is a new hive developed by Beewise, which includes precision robotics, computer vision and artificial intelligence. It allows you to constantly monitor bees, using AI to monitor their needs in real time. Beewise does not change the traditional work of beekeepers. Rather, it only complements their work by modernizing the traditional hive.

Safra claims that Beewise's Beehome hive provides 24-hour monitoring and uses intelligent technology, which significantly increase pollination capacity and honey production, reveals threats to a colony of honey bees, such as pesticides and the presence of pests, and immediately responds to these threats in real time without requiring human intervention, thermoregulated, protected from fires, floods, Asian wasps, or hornets-killers, and provides improved feeding methods when food is not available to bees.

The Beehome project runs on solar energy and holds up to 24 hives, and can also automatically extract honey using a built-in centrifuge.

Beewise manages more than seven billion bees, corresponding to 25,000 acres of pollinated crops. According to company estimates, with the help of Beehome in 12 months, more than 160 million bees were saved.

The company claims that Beehome reduces bee mortality by 80% - from 35% colony loss during pollination to less than 8% - which leads to an increase in yield by at least 50%. In addition, Beehome eliminates approximately 90% of manual labor compared to traditional hives.

If a problem occurs, the beekeeper receives a notification through the application, which allows you to intervene remotely through the computer or in person, if necessary.

A third of the world's food is pollinated by bees. Moreover, 71% of the crop of vegetables, fruits, seeds and nuts is pollinated by bees. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) estimated that in 2016, from $235 billion to $577 billion of annual global food production depended on the direct contribution of pollinators.^[1]

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