Digitised Beehive Münchsmünster

As pollinators, bees (honey bees and wild bees) play a fundamentally important role in preserving biodiversity and ensuring the security of food supply. To emphasize the importance of this trait, World Bee Day was created. World Bee Day takes place on May 20 and goes back to the Slovenian master court of Maria Theresa in Vienna, Anton Janscha.

Since its founding more than 15 years ago, the Audi Environmental Foundation has been constantly dedicated to the protection and research of the bee world. It supports projects at schools that are intended to reduce the inhibition threshold for beekeeping. Distributing beehives and beekeeping equipment is intended to get students excited about the small and important insect. In addition, the Audi Environmental Foundation combines classic environmental protection activities with high-tech research themed Greenovation. This is also the case in the we4bee project, in which a beehive equipped with various sensors was developed last year. More than 100 specimens of these beehives have since been built and distributed to participating schools and educational institutions. The beehives are digitally networked with each other. All data is collected centrally on the server of the University of Würzburg, where it is scientifically analyzed by data science specialists using machine learning. The aim is to gain a detailed understanding of the bee behaviour and health status of the respective bee colonies by evaluating this sensor data. From this, care measures and optimal intervention times for the beekeeper can be derived. Influences from the environment on the bees also become clear, such as the influence of weather or traffic on the development and behaviour of the bees. One vision of the project is to be able to use the bee colony as a biosensor in the long term and even predict severe weather events from bee behavior using pattern recognition methods.

While last year the hardware was developed, tested, produced and distributed, "now the place comes to life". In times of Corona-related shutdowns with school closures, there will be delays in many places. We are all the more pleased that the beehive of the Audi Environmental Foundation was able to be stocked with a swarm of bees last weekend – i.e. just in time for World Bee Day 2020 – in compliance with hygiene regulations. The bees have quickly settled into their new home, as the measurement data impressively show. The scale of the digital hive showed a "feed weight" of 3.3 kg. After just one day, the weight has already risen to 4.4 kg. These measurement data impressively show how diligently the bees collect pollen and nectar, as well as how they have begun to build honeycombs and lay eggs. Let's stay curious about how the bee colony develops and what exciting insights and insights we will gain from the sensors.

Audi Environmental Foundation – Home of Greenovation!