A team of beekeepers and software developers from Sweden have proposed a plan that might save the colonies of bees from the danger of being extinct. The team wants to build an AI-powered app that would analyze images of beehives to spot the mites that impose danger to the insects' lives.
In an article published in Digital Trends, the team wants to run an AI-powered app called BeeScanning in order to analyze images and alert keepers of bees of the presence of a small mite called Varroa destructor that could kill the insects. The app could also remind the keeps to get rid the hives of the mites.
"Last summer, I started taking pictures of frames with brood to learn the capacity of different queens and examining the [images], I discovered mites, which I didn't see the moving bees when I first took the pictures," Bjorn Lagerman said. Lagerman is the founder of BeeScanning who has been beekeeping for 45 years already.
In his observation, the mites appeared as little red dots on the back of the bees. The more pictures he took, the more mites that he found.
He realized that he cold develop a tool to help other owners of bees in order to save them. The tool could scan the images faster and more accurate than a normal person's eyes.
In order to start this, he gathered a small and started seeking funds throughKickstarter. In an article published in Parameter Less, they initially planned to launch a tool that would help keepers of bees around the world to collaborate by uploading images of their hives.
"If you don't monitor varroa and treat accordingly, your bees will die," Lagerman said. He added that it is the motivation that drives beekeepers to examine their colonies in all ways they can think of.
Currently, bees are considered to be in a dangerous state as 40 percent of their colonies disappeared last year in the United States alone. It is said that the small mite called Varroa destructor is the significant contributor to the collapse of the colonies.