Globally, beekeeping helps thousands and thousands of livelihoods by honey, wax, propolis, and pollination companies. Bees not solely present honey; they’re additionally irreplaceable as pollinators of many agricultural and horticultural vegetation.
Bees are the unsung heroes of our meals techniques. Roughly 75% of the world’s meals crops rely, a minimum of partly, on pollinators like bees, butterflies, and bats. Bees deal with the lion’s share, pollinating about one-third of all the things we eat, from espresso and avocados to apples and beans. They’re important to meals safety, biodiversity, and the livelihoods of hundreds of smallholder farmers.
In Kenya, beekeeping is a conventional supply of earnings, particularly for rural smallholders. Honey is excessive in demand, and a examine discovered {that a} ten-hive enterprise can generate earnings similar to cultivating about 0.86 hectares of maize.
Nonetheless, bee colonies are declining in Kenya and across the globe. A few of this decline is related to “colony collapse dysfunction,” an irregular phenomenon the place employee bees abandon a hive, leaving the queen and brood behind. The dysfunction is ascribed to a mixture of elements — pesticides, parasites, and stress — however its actual trigger continues to be unknown.
Margaret Wanjiku is a Kenyan agripreneur serving to beekeepers fight colony collapse. Her startup, Pollen Patrollers, designs sensible hive kits outfitted with sensors that monitor hive temperature, humidity, weight, and bee exercise in real-time. This information helps beekeepers anticipate and forestall colony collapse earlier than it occurs.
As a baby, Wanjiku lived with beekeeping grandparents in rural Murang’a. Later, working as an extension officer in Kajiado, she famous that the smallholder beekeepers didn’t routinely test their hives, resulting in vital losses.
The Sensible Hive package is a small, internet-connected, and solar-powered system that provides real-time, distant monitoring of beehives. It’s inserted underneath the roof of the beehive, the place it tracks environmental situations and hive exercise. The sensor information is processed and analyzed at Kenyatta College Innovation Middle earlier than it’s despatched again to the beekeeper. Beekeepers obtain SMS alerts if situations turn into unfavorable.
Sensible Hive package (📷: Pollen Patrollers)
The kits are leased to farmers for $2 per thirty days. The corporate additionally presents exact pollination companies at $10 per acre of farmland. The corporate says it has helped over 3,200 farmers and beekeepers enhance crop yields and honey manufacturing.
Pollen Patrollers is a small, 11-person firm. Its kits are priced affordably, however connectivity stays a problem in rural Kenya, the place many lack dependable mobile protection. Undaunted, the crew plans to scale operations and enhance system adoption throughout Kenya over the subsequent three years.
Wanjiku says they’re the primary firm to develop a distant hive monitoring resolution in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Bees are the world’s most important agricultural allies, and defending them strengthens meals safety.
Excited about constructing your individual customized hive monitoring system? You is likely to be impressed by these Hackster tasks: The Busy Bee, Polytech Sorbonne Beehive monitoring, and B-NAHL Hive Monitor.
