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Beewise pulls in $80M investment for robotic beehives
- kyle_martin1 5y ago
- thomasahle 5y agoWhen I read the headline I thought this would be about using micro drones for polination instead of real bees. Maybe one of the last animals still helping in major scale farming is about to fall to the machines. However this is instead about a more closely symbiotic relationship with bees. Cool!
- gareth_untether 5y agoA big issue for bees is disease. If the sick bees can be automatically stopped from entering the hive then the spread of disease will be stopped
- toxicFork 5y agoAnts have some methods of doing this exactly, with some guards at the entrance carrying off infected ants before they can enter. Seen in the documentary "fantastic fungi".
- hcrisp 5y agoAnd Varroa destructor mites. If Beewise can figure a simple but effective method for eradicating them from the hive, they will solve one of the biggest stressors on bees. Beekeeping, as has been said, is really pest management.
- plasticchris 5y agoThese can be killed easily with vaporized oxalic acid in two treatments spaced a week apart (iirc, dad keeps bees not me). This pretty much eliminated any hive loss for years now, and we’re convinced this is the fix for colony collapse disorder (at least in our area).
- gumby 5y ago$120MM in three priced rounds (plus two seed rounds). I wonder how much common has any more.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- JamesAdir 5y agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30865323 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30865323
- the_duke 5y agoA few years ago my cousin decided to have a wild garden. She just removes some weeds, but lets most things grow unchecked. The garden is now always full of bees in summer. So sure, we can invest millions in robotic beehives. But we could also let nature do it's job.
- coward123 5y agoI love what your cousin did, but there’s a big difference between that and beekeeping. Not even the same types of bees. The bees kept for honey / wax production and pollination are more like livestock than “nature.”
- the_duke 5y agoMy point was that if the goal is to "save bee populations", as the article claims, then we can do that by providing the natural habitat that bees need.
- dhzhzjsbevs 5y agoOr we could just stop killing them with pesticides.
- progre 5y agoExactly like livestock. If you take a look at the family tree of comercial honebee queens (yes, one exists, breeders track lineage) you will find that there are lots of loops and backtracks. Basically, lots of inbreeding. Bees are bread for 1) Production capacity. 2) Easy handling The problems that beekeepers have been seeing the last 10 years may be in part a problem of genetic diversity. Thats not the main story though: Wild bee populations (along with nearly all other insects) are having a bad time too. Habitat loss and pesticides are thought to be the reason. Beekeeping may even be a contributing factor to some wild populations decline due to competition over ever more scarse resources.
- dhzhzjsbevs 5y agoI'm surprised they're not doing something more ground breaking regarding hive design. https://youtu.be/9ItlOFLTUAs https://youtu.be/9ItlOFLTUAs