Can smart sensors improve the health and productivity of bee colonies in South Africa?
An interview with Frontier Tech Pioneers, Dorcas Lekganyane and Aidan Darker
The 2007 Dreamworks film, Bee Movie was generally regarded as a bit of a letdown. The New York Times called it “soft and fuzzy entertainment” while Roger Ebert awarded it two stars and claimed it “tries hard, but never really takes off”. Fifteen years later though, the animated Jerry Seinfeld vehicle can confidently claim to have inspired one of the latest projects taken forward as part of Frontier Technology Livestreaming.
“My love of bees probably began the same way a lot of people’s did” laughs Dorcas Lekganyane, a botanist based in Johannesburg and a member of the UK Science & Innovation Network (SIN). “I watched Bee Movie in high school and I was like “Oh wow, really? I didn't know that!”
Unfortunately around the same time as Dorcas’ fascination with all things aphid was developing, beekeepers in America were starting to report the first instances of what would become known as Colony Collapse Disorder. Very soon beekeepers around the world were experiencing the same set of problems.
“One of the big problems we’ve got in South Africa is the same problem we’ve got everywhere,” explains Aidan Darker, a Director at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office and Dorcas’ colleague at SIN. “Our pollutants are inadvertently destroying the biodiversity of our farming. By spraying our crops to protect them we're destroying the health of bees and other insects that actually do some good.”
It’s not just pollutants that can present a threat to bee population. Dorcas reels off a list of other dangers ranging from natural foragers such as beavers that will steal honey from hives, to climate change, which leads to the decay and deterioration of the kind of environments that bees need to thrive.
“Climate change has also affected where bees actually live,” Dorcas continues, “which is why in our project the beehive communities are going to be scattered around South Africa to try and increase the number of bees per sector so more pollination happens naturally, as opposed to unnaturally. You don't want a whole load of bees in one community!”
The project Dorcas is talking about is one that plans to use technology to help monitor and safeguard bee colonies, by connecting data gathered through audio sensors using the Internet of Things (IoT). But It’s an idea that might never have come about if it weren’t for the pandemic.
What happens when the facilitators become the innovators?
“The last two and a bit years have been a real pain in the neck for everyone,” says Aidan. “Dorcas had just started and she didn't even have a laptop for the first three or four months because she couldn't come into work to get one! Plus, all our funding got cut, we've had mergers, you name it. It's been really difficult. But, on the other hand, if we didn't have the pandemic we would have just carried on doing what everyone else before us had done.”
Aidan explains that, because much of what SIN does revolves around bringing people together, in the midst of a pandemic that focus had to shift. “A lot of the work we do is about being a facilitator,” he says. “We're not experts in particular sectors, so we bring experts from the UK and Africa together. But, when a lot of that halted, we had to look at things differently. It made us look for other approaches, how we do it and who we do it with. We had to ask ourselves, ‘As well as bringing together these great people who have great ideas, how do we ourselves become more innovative?’”
As Dorcas picks up the theme, she exemplifies the excitement and enthusiasm that this new approach has injected into this team. “Technology, the environment, agriculture… We want to bring all these different things together and look at how we can address some of the challenges and issues that people have here in South Africa. Real, genuine issues that can make a big difference.”
Finding a way to listen to what the bees are saying
“Bees communicate by sound,” explained Dorcas, so they plan to insert a sensor into the beehive in order to listen in to the sounds of the hive. “Depending on how the beehive is sounding, a beekeeper will know whether the hive is healthy or not. And if it’s not healthy, then they can look at the reasons why. Is the temperature right? Is the environment alright? How has the weather been? Is the hive overpopulated?”
As well as making it much easier to monitor the health of hives, the hope is that the tech Dorcas and the team are developing will also be able to capture valuable data that can be used to create a wider picture that goes beyond the health of individual colonies.
“Obviously, what we're going to be looking at initially is their health,” says Dorcas, “but this tech allows you to also monitor a lot of the bees' communication so there’s going to be a lot more fascinating data that's going to come out of it. As well as how they're communicating we’ll be able to see how fast it has been for the beekeeper to come in and to interject, and what impact that interjection had. Also, over time, we can get a picture of what the potential threats a normal beehive in a certain area in South Africa might face, given the conditions.”
Protecting the health of bees to improve the health of a country
Although IoT technology has been used in bee colonies in the West before, this is the first time the tech has been employed in an African country. As Dorcas explains, that’s important not just because of the particular set of threats South Arican’s bee population has suffered from in recent years, but also because of the social and economic challenges the country faces.
“If bees in South Africa and across Africa are healthier then it will help with food security issues,” Dorcas explains, “because, if there are fewer bees then it means plants and crops are not getting pollinated. And because bees are not location specific, it means not just the crops of one farm will get pollinated, but that the whole community gets to benefit.”
There’s a commercial element here too. Despite producing what Dorcas describes as “one of the best honeys in the world,” South Africa currently imports around a thousand tons of honey a year. It’s the team’s hope that this technology will go some way to supporting commercial bee farmers and reducing that reliance on imports.
“Healthy hives produce healthy yields of honey,” Dorcas says, “which means we can help the honey industry in South Africa. It would be great to have the sort of international distribution that means that everybody can have a taste of what the South African flora tastes like via its honey.”
It’s clear that Dorcas and Aidan see this project as the first step to something much bigger, that can not only influence bee colonies in South Africa, but also the region. And they are keen to stress that, beyond the economic and agricultural aims, success for them involves outreach and education.
“One of the locations we're going to be implementing it in is the township of Soweto,” Dorcas tells me. “There you have small communities that fend for themselves, where crop farming is done just for the immediate community. So we’re going to be helping communities understand the importance bees play in our daily lives; how this little insect can produce crops and yields.”
As Aidan says, “What’s the point if we don’t tell everyone about it? It's about getting that message across, teaching people about their environment. After two years of doom and gloom I just find it a really exciting opportunity. This is a small project in the greater scheme of things. But it's really exciting and it matters because it's using new ideas and new technology to actually achieve something that people can get their heads around. So we could take people there and show them: ‘This is what we mean, this is what it does and this is why it's important’”.
“We want everything” Dorcas interrupts with a laugh. “We want something that is exciting and interesting, that brings people together and shares knowledge, creates jobs and helps the environment… Why not aim high?”
If you’d like to dig in further…
👀 Follow this pilot’s journey on their pilot profile page (regularly updated)
📝 Dig into our portfolio evidence on IoT Sensors for Impact (short read)
📡 Read about how sensors are being used across small-scale farming communities to take action against climate change (short read)