Hi-tech solution to pollination crisis
23 January 2023
How our technical moulding capability is helping honey bees and the almond tree bloom in California.
Working collaboratively to solve global challenges
The diversity of products the Design for Manufacture (DFM) team at Tex Plastics are involved in is huge. One project involved working with Sony Europe B.V.’s UK Technology Centre, and their client who is a cutting-edge tech company. The challenging brief the three companies collaborated on was to deliver a smart sensor unit and pod to monitor bee activity in the hive. Tex Plastics were involved in the manufacture of the sensor housing for this product, which is designed to help track the hive health and pollination progress in almost real time.
A deadline driven project
Each year between January and February, just before almond trees burst into bloom, two-thirds of the nation’s commercial honey bee hives converge in California. So it was vital in undertaking the sensor housing project, Tex Plastics were able to meet the deadlines to complete the work. So, next time you crunch on almonds, think about the honey bees that made that great snack possible.
Did you know wild and domestic bees perform about 80 percent of all pollination worldwide?
This means approximately one in three bites of food you take, you have a bee to thank. It's well documented that bees are critical to the whole ecosystem and they are facing many threats. The needs of agribusiness outstripped the ability of bee populations to pollinate them naturally long ago. The techniques to fill that gap involve beekeepers who can provide lots of hives on short notice and move them wherever they need to be. This presents its own challenges and as hives must be deployed and checked manually and regularly, entailing a great deal of labour by the beekeepers. A hive may go weeks between inspections, and one of the biggest challenges for beekeepers is to understand exactly what is going on in their hives. If they can't see warning signs early enough to do anything about certain issues – the hives could succumb to colony collapse.
The sensor monitors the hive colony's vital KPI's
The sensor sits within the hive and collects temperature, humidity and sound - an accelerometer (a device that measures the force caused by vibration or a change in motion). It also uses pollen traps and computer vision to check the amount of pollen brought to the colony. This data is combined with microclimate and other information gathered, including the behaviours and patterns from inside the hives, and correlated. Using modern technology and algorithms the sensor can keep the beekeeper informed as data from the hive is transferred into the cloud. This is displayed on an online dashboard for the beekeeper to review. The beekeeper gets an alert if the hive is in distress, allowing them to immediately tend to the hive.