(INS) ROBOBEES

A modern beehive powered by solar energy, monitored by artificial intelligence and equipped with a robot arm is coming to the United States.

Beehome, a beehive that holds up to 24 bee colonies (which includes a queen and her 30,000 to 50,0000 offspring), is available to beekeepers from the Israeli company Beewise. About 150 to 200 devices will be put to use in the U.S. by the end of the year, with 1,000 expected by the end of 2022. Most of the devices will be in California, where pollination from bees is vital for the state’s agriculture industry.

Ordinarily, beekeepers must travel long distances to care for their many hives, often not knowing what problems they might encounter when they arrive, Beewise CEO Saar Safra said. But these eight-foot-tall devices allow beekeepers to check in on all their hives remotely 24/7, and perform tasks like providing medicine or food via a robotic arm inside the device.

“It’s kind of a win-win-win,” Safra said. “So the bees win, the beekeepers win and we win, because when I say we, I mean you, right, three times a day on your plate.”

Bees face a number of stressors, including climate change, pesticides and parasites that cause entire colonies to collapse at a rate of about 30 percent per year, according to the EPA. With this technology, Safra said that in tests, the collapse rate decreased to 8 percent per year, compared to control groups that collapsed at a rate of 30 to 40 percent. Link - Katelyn Weisbrod & Bob Berwyn - link - link more like this - link