Beewise: out-of-the-box thinking to save the world’s bees

• Author: Catherine Jewell
• Position: Information and Digital Outreach Division, WIPO

“The collapse of bee colonies is a derivative of climate change; we’re causing this harm and, paradoxically, we’re harming our own global food supply,” says Saar Safra. (Photo: JLGutierrez / E+ / Getty Images)

How did you come to set up Beewise?

I am an entrepreneur with a background in software engineering, but my co-founder, Elijah Radzyner, is a commercial beekeeper who, like other beekeepers around the world, has been facing the collapse of bee colonies, despite his best efforts. So, we got together and began exploring how we could use robotics and AI to save the bees. We started iterating on different products. The first ones were very rudimentary, but very early on we saw a product that could actually save bees at scale. That’s when we established Beewise and started developing our BeeHomes.

Why is it so important to save the bees?

First, bee colonies are collapsing all around the globe. This is a huge problem because bees pollinate 75 percent of all the fruit and vegetables, seeds and nuts that we eat on this planet. Without bees, we won’t have the vegetables, fruits and flowers we enjoy every day. Bees are the infrastructure of our global food supply, yet we are losing about 35 percent of bee colonies every single year all over the world. This is not about single bees dying; it’s about whole colonies of bees dying, which is a huge problem.

Second, the global population is growing and as more people come out of poverty, they want a healthy diet. So, at a time when demand for the bees’ products keeps growing, the supply is being cut by 35 percent every year. And the gap is getting wider. There is no clear line of supply keeping up with demand. This is the problem that we are trying to solve.

Just like traditional hives, the BeeHome houses a number of bee colonies; it is just bigger and in its central corridor it has a robot that monitors the colonies 24/7 using computer vision, artificial intelligence (AI), and neural networks. These tools identify any issues the bees may be experiencing and trigger the robot to take appropriate action. (Photo: Courtesy of Beewise)

Why are colonies collapsing?

When you’re dealing with a specific virus, like COVID, for example, you can identify it and work towards a solution. It takes time, but it’s a relatively achievable task.

With bees, that isn’t the case. Bees are suffering from a plethora of issues, all at the same time. Take climate change. Every time temperatures rise by one-half of a percent, bees lose about 5 percent of productivity. Bees are also dealing with pests and diseases that didn’t exist a few decades ago. And with modern agriculture, they’re subject to...