Much has been said about how the Internet of Things will change consumers’ daily lives and how it relates to consumer privacy.  But now, the Internet of Things (IoT) has also extended to other uses besides AI-assistants and medical devices.  A recent innovation has used the Internet of Things to study bees in an attempt to figure out why there has been such worldwide colony collapse.

New Device Utilizes The Internet of Things to Learn About Bees and Help Bee Decline

ApisProtect, an Irish company, has created a device that monitors the health of honey bees and uses the Internet of Things to study bee hives and deliver the information. Currently, the unit is only available to commercial beekeepers and allows data on the hive to be sent back and forth.

The ApisProtect sensor unit is marketed as the ApisMonitor and attaches to the roof of a honeybee beehive. ApisProtect boasts that the unit will allow beekeepers to have access to new insight that will allow them to act to protect the health of the colony before collapse is imminent.  The ApisProtect is marketed as being able to show beekeepers the condition of the hive, analyze problems with it, as well as provide suggestions to the beekeepers on how to proceed when the hive is in danger.

ApisProtect and Immarsat Partner to Build Worldwide Network for Internet of Things to Study Bees

ApisProtect is also collaborating with Immarsat, a company known for its global and mobile satellite capabilities.  The partnership is intended to allow the Internet of Things to build and access a worldwide network of ApisProtect data in order to slow the current, rapid decline of apiaries.  The partnership also hopes that it will actually be able to potentially increase honey production in the end.

Specifically, Immarsat will contribute an analytics platform that measures the bees’ health and report it via Long Range Wide Area Networks and Broadband Global Area Network connectivity. Over time, the data collected will help a machine learning algorithm determine problems or colony collapse much earlier.

How the Internet of Things to Study Bees Introduces Innovative Twist to Future IoT Use

This new scientific use of the Internet of Things gives insight to yet another field that can significantly benefit from the mobile and worldwide capabilities of the Internet of Things.  While many have spoken about the impact the Internet of Things will have on household and medical devices, it is refreshing to see that the Internet of Things can also extend to scientific research and studies.

If ApisProtect is able to stop the decline of honey bees and properly predict hive problems before the point of no return, one can expect the Internet of Things to be used similarly on other wildlife or plant problems.

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