Development and Evaluation of BeeTrack Technology in a Commercial Beekeeping Context

The objective of the project is to provide beekeepers with a digital tool for the predictive management of their apiary, called BeeTrack, using artificial intelligence, to reduce the annual mortality of their livestock by analyzing the effects related to locations visited and actions taken on hives. The BeeTrack, from Nectar, is a beehive traceability solution that records all the locations a hive visits as well as actions performed using RFID tags and a mobile smart phone application. The current problem is as follows: beekeepers offering migratory pollination services do not have no access to analysis tools enabling them to compare the effects of their apiary management practices on the annual death rate. Indeed, even if the operation keeps a detailed register of the actions carried out on hives (feeding, anti-parasitic treatment, requeering, etc.), the migratory nature of the service makes impossible the geographical follow-up of the hives in an individual way, and thus the correlation between practices carried out at the beginning of the season on hives of which we will lose track. The impossibility of hive traceability individually makes any correlation between apiary management practices and mortality impossible, leading to annual mortality rates of 40%.