There is an Australian startup using AI to help protect the honey industry, and it started by studying how one expert beekeeper thinks.
The crisis
The varroa mite is the biggest threat to honeybees globally. It feeds on bee larvae, spreads viruses and can kill a hive if it goes untreated. After a major incursion in Australia, the government declared in 2022 that eradication was no longer feasible. The focus shifted to limiting the damage. Bees pollinate a huge share of our crops, so this is a food security problem, not just a honey one.
The company
BeeRight started life as Vimana Tech, which got seed funding in about 2019. It is based in Melbourne and was co-founded by Joel Kuperholz and Vignesh Murugan.
They worked with Ian Cane, a third generation beekeeper who can walk through a field of hives and pick which ones have a problem, like a missing queen. The goal was to turn that kind of instinct into something a device could do.
How it works
A low cost device sits in the hive and turns it into a self-monitoring smart hive. It reports on hive activity, colony strength, queen status, honey levels and signs of disease or pests, all without opening the hive.
The partners
- Bega Group was the first customer
- CSIRO is involved through its biosecurity program
- A trial backed by the federal Department of Agriculture used the ACT, which is varroa free, as its clean site, with the ACT Government helping install devices and the University of Canberra processing the data
My read
This is what I think AI was actually supposed to be for. Not another chatbot, but a cheap sensor that gives every beekeeper some of the judgement of someone with decades in the field. If varroa keeps spreading, early detection is going to matter a lot.