A smart beehive on the roof of a central Tel Aviv shopping mall is part of a global pilot designed to help save the honey bee.
The hive, fitted with sensors that continuously monitor temperature and moisture levels and record sound in and around the hive, is operated by the World Bee Project, a London-based community interest company dedicated to tracking the state of beehives worldwide. Stationed atop Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Center the solar-powered hive is connected to the web.
Beehives on a London rooftop. Photo: Asaf Lev
According to data by The World Bee Project, 77% of the global food supply is dependent on bee pollination.
“In the past 50 years, the volume of pollination-dependant agricultural production rose by 300%, but the bee population is plunging,” Sabiha Rumani Malik, founder and executive president of the World Bee Project, told Calcalist in a November interview.
Enterprise software company Oracle Corp. is the World Bee Project’s technological partner. Data gathered by the project’s smart hives is uploaded to Oracle’s cloud.
