The plight of bees has reached the public consciousness, with the BBC Big Bee Challenge among the campaigns to support these valuable pollinators. For commercial beekeepers, BeeSecure is supporting sustainable beekeeping by improving the way that bee services are rented on-farm. The company was profiled in the Start-Up Showcase at REAP 2020 and has won EU funding to progress its work. BeeSecure is based in Italy and supports thousands of beehives across mainland Europe.
Co-founder Roberto Pasi says that by tapping into vibrations in the hive, agri-tech start-up BeeSecure is able to listen into conversations ensuring that the bees are happy, healthy and performing well. He says the company can understand ten main topics, quickly identifying issue. Data from the hives can be viewed in real-time by the farmer and keeper via a secure app. Hive theft is an increasing problem for beekeepers so BeeSecure also contains a GPS tracker, which provides an alert if the hive is moved.
Roberto says the company has had a busy year: “This year we got good news that our consortium got approved for EU funded project, and we have started the activities.
“We are pretty excited about it, as the project involves safeguarding agro-ecosystem resilience under climate change through efficient pollination and sustainable beekeeping. We are going to work in different countries in the Mediterranean area, and provide and improve our devices to create smart digital technologies for beekeepers.
“We’ve also had two new people joining our team, to help out with our operations, specifically to participate in more collaborative projects.
“Our product is progressing well and a couple of months ago we started testing our devices on Mason bees. Our goal is to include as many pollinators as possible in our database. We are currently also in contact with a couple of universities (EU and the US) to further test wild bees and analyse their sounds, to help identify the type of bee present and their health.
“We are currently looking for 1€ million investment to scale, as well as to further develop our sensors and expand to different markets.”
REAP 2021: Changing Time(s) for Agriculture – 10th November 2021
Imagine a world where agriculture is not constrained by time. The ability to manage and manipulate time is increasing and REAP 2021 will explore the advances in technology and breakthroughs in science that is making this possible.
REAP brings together people from across the agri-tech ecosystem who believe that innovation is the engine for change. The conference bridges the gap between producer needs and technology solutions and showcases exciting agri-tech start-ups.