A global beehive monitoring network has been launched using big data analytics and cloud technology to produce the first ever global picture of the state of the world’s bee population.
The World Bee Project Hive Network will eventually analyse huge amounts of data from beehives around the world and thanks to Oracle Cloud provide access to the data for governments, policy makers, scientists, researchers, farmers, food producers and beekeepers. It is hoped that the project will contribute to worldwide action to monitor pollinator decline, identify practices and build capacity in the management of pollination services for sustainable agriculture, and improve food security, nutrition and livelihoods.
Bees and other pollinators are priceless when it comes to ensuring the global safety of the food supply chain. One in every three bites of food eaten worldwide depends on honey bees and other pollinators such as wild bees.
1.4 billion jobs and 77% of global food supply worth up to $577 billion annually depend on pollinators, but the global bee population is in rapid decline. England’s bees are vanishing faster than anywhere else in Europe, with a 54% decline in beehives between 1985 and 2005.Scientists estimate one third of all honey bee colonies in the United States have already vanished but what scientists lack is a comprehensive global set of data to analyse the rates of decline in different parts of the world and the differing reasons in each region in order to find a solution to reduce the rate of decline.
‘Our lives are intrinsically connected to the bees,’ said Sabiha Rumani Malik, founder and executive president at The World Bee Project CIC. ‘By protecting bees and other pollinators we can help solve problems with global food supply and poverty and reduce further loss of biodiversity and damage of ecosystems.
‘Our partnership with Oracle Cloud is an extraordinary marriage between nature and technology. It will engage the public into caring more and more for pollinators, it will enable advanced research and, crucially, action on a scale previously impossible to achieve. The more we understand the relationships between pollination, food and human wellbeing, the more we can do to protect bees and pollinators – and help protect our planet and ourselves.’ The World Bee Project CIC partners with the University of Reading School of Agriculture, Policy and Development.
