Bees around the world are at risk of extinction.
And the tech industry is part of the problem.
For almost two decades the public has heard sharp, increasingly urgent warnings about declining bee populations, usually with reminders that humans rely on bees to pollinate crops that produce the global food supply.
In fact, 90% of the world’s supply of food comes from just 100 crops and 71 of those rely on bee pollination. So, it stands to reason that big declines in bee populations equals big trouble for people, especially with an anticipated global population of nearly 10 million people by 2050. We’ve got more mouths to feed and fewer bees to help do it.
Bee populations have been under pressure for a variety of reasons this century: including pesticide use, which can damage their immune systems, habitat loss, monoculture agriculture, climate change, disease, and parasites, amongst other issues. For bees, it’s truly a perfect storm of problems.
After years of (mostly) indifference, venture capitalists in the tech industry have started funding organizations looking to provide technological solutions to declining bee populations, particularly those managed by commercial beekeepers.
Beewise ($120 million USD to date) and BeeHero ($64 million USD to date) are two of the larger recipients of the recent wave of venture funding.
Israel-based Beewise makes climate-controlled, solar-powered, robotic beehives using AI that include persistent bee monitoring. The technology is designed to help beekeepers manage their hives, not replace them entirely. Over four years, Beewise technology has reduced ‘Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD)’ from 35% to 8% in the hives it manages.
CCD is a phenomenon that primarily affects honeybee colonies, leading to the sudden and unexplained disappearance of worker bees from the hive, which can result in the collapse of the colony. CCD has resulted in variable declines in various countries, but the numbers have ranged from approximately 25-40% over the last two decades.
As Beewise CEO Saar Safra told Forbes:
“We’re losing honeybee colonies at an unprecedented rate globally. Just 40 years ago, the annual colony loss rate was a mere 3%. Today, it’s more than 35%. When this rate surpasses 50%, the world will be unable to sustain the bee population.”
California-based (but Israel-founded) BeeHero offers what it has termed “Precision Pollination” technology. The AI-enabled offering uses sensors to monitor and manage pollinators (not just honeybees but primarily honeybees). BeeHero creates data on bee activity, hive health, and environmental conditions in real-time. This enables farmers to maximize crop pollination and improve crop yields and quality.
These are two promising organizations in the growing ‘BeeTech’ space — but they’re just the start.
In an intriguing use case, Massachusetts-based biotechnology company Greenlight Biosciences has developed an anti-mite RNA technology similar to the one that underpinned Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine. While the technology remains nascent, it could eventually enable targeted attacks on the dramatically named ‘varroa destructor’ mites, which can wipe out entire hives. These mites remain one of the main culprits in honeybee population declines.
Enterprise-level technology companies are also putting money and focus behind bees, if from a slightly different angle. Google and IBM are working with Free Range Beehives, an organization that offers contracted honeybee hive management services. Free Range Beehives cares for beehives on corporate properties and delivers employee engagement programs to company employees as part of their service. It’s a feel-good initiative for company leaders and employees, even if it may not address the bee population issues at scale. After all, who doesn’t want to save the bees? Especially the ones that make honey.
Saving commercial honeybees may mean harming native and wild bees
This is where it’s important to understand there may be unintended consequences to focus on saving commercially managed honeybees. The majority of bee-saving technologies are targeted towards these commercial businesses today. That’s why they’re focused on honeybees and not native and wild bees.
There are over 1,000 species of wild bees in North America alone. By definition, wild bees don’t have beekeepers looking out for their welfare, despite their critical role in pollinating everything from apples, blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries, to tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers.
In fact, wild bees are the pollinators of the majority of plants. That’s why more of our efforts need to go towards their welfare, according to conservation biologist Sheila Colla, Associate Professor at York University.
In an interview with Rewilding Magazine, Colla outlined the problem:
“The number one threat to our native bees right now, for the ones that are at risk of extinction, is introduced diseases from managed bees from our agricultural system. We don’t have good data sets for the over 1,000 species of native bees, but we expect at least a quarter are at risk of extinction.”
Dr. Alison McAfee is a bee researcher at the University of British Columbia. She expanded on the issue in a piece for Scientific American:
“High densities of honeybee colonies increase competition between native pollinators for forage, putting even more pressure on the wild species that are already in decline. Honeybees are extreme generalist foragers and monopolize floral resources, thus leading to exploitative competition — that is, where one species uses up a resource, not leaving enough to go around.”
The (tech-enabled) future of all bees
This isn’t a pure black and white issue, however.
Healthy honeybee populations are critical to our collective food supplies. The tech industry’s response to their decline is an important, if imperfect, step towards securing the future of all bees and our food supply. Today’s commercially-focused honeybee technology may evolve into tomorrow’s broader solution for wild populations.
For example, the U.K. grocery giant Tesco and the WWF (World Wildlife Fund) have partnered with the tech startup, AgriSound, to deploy its insect monitoring device, Polly, across apple orchards in the hopes of benefiting all bees, wild included.
The small, unobtrusive Polly devices are designed to attract a range of pollinators like wild bees. The data from the devices will enable farmers to “measure the change in pollinator numbers over time, helping to evaluate the benefits of farm level interventions to boost pollinator numbers, helping to enhance biodiversity and reduce the need for artificial fertilizers or pesticides.”
So, that’s one solution that is actually targeting wild bees.
And it may tell us about the future of tech-enabled conservation.
The solution for all bees – including honeybees, bumblebees, and all the other species, both commercially raised and wild – may lie in technology, especially when multiple stakeholders come to the table.
It’s possible to imagine a future where a variety of bee-preserving technologies are embedded in both commercial and wild environments, funded by both public and private stakeholders, and serve as key tools in ensuring healthy bee populations of all kinds.
The question is how fast can we get there – and what will we lose in the meantime?
