Announcing FutureBee!

We are looking to lead the way in data driven approach to beekeeping to improve bee health and the efficiency of beekeeping in the UK. We are looking for corporate sponsors who would like to help support our efforts. We are calling this project FutureBee.

What is the problem?

Very little has changed in beekeeping methodologies in the past 100 years since moveable frame hives were invested. Beekeepers inspect hives weekly to check for space,. stores, swarming tendencies and disease.

This is disruptive for the bees - each time the hive it opened it sets back the bees a few day as they tidy up the hive, stablise the pheromones and temperature.

At an industry level the UK imports 90% of its honey, and 80% of that comes from China. If we put aside the widespread honey adulteration one of the reasons that honey can come from China at much lower cost is the cost of labour. Beekeeping is a labour intensive industry.

What do we want to achieve?

The outcomes we are looking to achieve are:

• Improved honeybee health and produce beekeeping measured by yield per hive. .

• Reduced time requirement to manage each hive, increasing the number of hives an individual can manage.

• Building a dataset that will enable beekeeping to engage with technology at a faster rate.

  
  

How will be achieve it?

• Measurement. The first step is to install sensors into each time

  • Weight. A critical measure of how of the level of stores within the hive .

  • Temperature.

  • Humidity.

  • Acoustics.

  • Weather.

• Data Gathering. We will then start to centrally collect this data enabling us to compare and contrast hives.

• Action Planning. We will then plan hive actions based on the data observed for that hive which will enable us to reduce the number of hives opened up each week.

What help do we need?

As ever for a small business funding is a challenge, so we are offering the chance for corporate sponsorship of the project of £1000 plus VAT.

In return you get:

• 20 jars of honey

• ESG content

• feature on our site as a supporter.

If you would like more details please send us a message!

Message Ben