Artificial Intelligence for beekeeping practices

Bees have always played a key role in promoting and maintaining biodiversity. Fondazione Bruno Kessler and Melixa, with some local companies, have launched a collaboration that uses artificial intelligence to analyze data for beekeeping, in order to offer environmental biomonitoring services, measuring the well-being of bees, enhancing their role as bio-indicators and the function of “sentinels of the environment,” and thus generate indicators of the impact of human activities on the environment and the improvement of environmental quality over time.

In particular, the AGRIBEE AI project, funded under the spoke 2 “Integrative AI” cascade call of the Future Artificial Intelligence – FAIR program, leverages integrative artificial intelligence techniques to build advanced data models and analytics that improve beekeeping practices in the context of climate change and assess the environmental impacts of agricultural activities on biodiversity. In detail, Fondazione Bruno Kessler and Melixa plan to build a state-of-the-art artificial intelligence platform using historical and current data, weather data, and agricultural datasets, involving some of the best experts in bees, agricultural practices, and artificial intelligence techniques.

The project also involves the CREA Institute for Research in Agriculture and the Environment and uses data from the BEENET project, collected from bee hive monitoring systems and beekeepers.

Other collaboration between FBK and Melixa is within the scope of Agrifood TEF, a European project coordinated by the Foundation, aimed at developing infrastructure for testing and experimenting with new products and services based on artificial intelligence and robotics, in support of the European agrifood sector.

The Melixa system, which thanks to the TEF is field-tested and validated in collaboration with the Edmund Mach Foundation, allows beekeepers to closely monitor the condition of the hive, making better informed decisions regarding the management of the bee colony and leading to an increase in productivity. This innovative system, for so-called precision beekeeping, enables the creation of true “smart hives,” which can monitor various vital bee and hive parameters in real time in an accurate, nonintrusive and efficient manner.

In 2025, these algorithms will become even more efficient predictive decision support software tools.

Fondazione Bruno Kessler – Communication and External Relations Service
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