LocationsDigital Apprentice in Beekeeping Service
January 13, 2025
Bees play a vital role in our planet’s lifecycle. They are crucial to agricultural production. It has been estimated that about one third of global food production depends on bees: important crops like fruits, nuts and many vegetables depend on bees to keep growing. Bees also provide a number of benefits for the economy: the beekeeping profession is one of the most important sources of revenue in many countries’ rural areas. Although bees are integral to food security, incentivising economic growth and sustaining biodiversity, they are faced with a number of threats: overall extinction rates remain between 100 and 1,000 times larger due to human impact.[1]
The family of Petar Pejić, co-founder and director of Niš-based startup ‘Beehold’, has been in beekeeping for generations. Years of experience in this profession taught them that traditional beekeeping methods, requiring frequent manual opening of the beehives, are tiresome and time-consuming. Thinking about how they could keep track of the situation inside the beehives with more efficiency and less invasiveness, without the need to manually open them - they came to the idea of a digital assistant.
“Beehold digital assistant for beekeepers is an AI-based solution that monitors the situation inside the hives and warns the beekeepers if something happens, foresees potential issues and gives advice to enhance yields”, co-founder and technical director Jelena Pejić says. The assistant was created by Beehold’s team of experts, using data collected by using patented technologies placed inside the hive frames.
This digital apprentice is important to further the beekeeping industry and protect the bees that remain crucial to our ecosystem. Traditional, manual hive inspections are often stressful for bees dues to sudden changes in temperature and light because of their opening. The digital beekeeping apprentice reduces the number of hives being opened by 80% since the AI technology enables the assistant to ‘see’ inside the hives without manually opening them. This reduces the risk to bees and the danger of losing bee colonies.
Beehold has operated on the Serbian market since 2022 and has successfully cooperated with local beekeepers who use the AI-assisted devices. Niš-based 'Beehold' entered into a partnership with Mostar-based ‘Fitnet’ company in 2024 with help from the Serbian Government support programme for innovative solutions applicable to various developmental challenges of regional countries, implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). As a result of their cooperation, 30 apiaries in Bosnia and Herzegovina started using the digital beekeeping apprentice.
Mostar-based ‘Fitnet’ is also engaged in developing and applying innovative solutions to help beekeepers monitor and streamline work processes. “Our solutions include digital devices like the BeeCare mobile app, SMS and Standalone scale, helping the beekeepers monitor their hives and manage them anytime, anywhere, by getting information about the weight, temperature and humidity inside the hives”, Fitnet sales and marketing manager Mateja Ereš explains. Beekeepers can use the mobile app developed by Fitnet experts to monitor data, analyse and facilitate decision-making.
Owing to the Beehold and Fitnet partnership, existing solutions were integrated so that Fitnet’s BeeCare beekeeper’s scale collects data from the hives and uploads them to a server, where Beehold’s assistant processes them and displays final instructions and warnings through the mobile app. Hence, the partnership between these two companies facilitated a transfer of knowledge and innovative solutions and provided additional support to beekeepers in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Petar and Mateja highlight how this solution is important since it helps save the bees that are crucial to pollination and biodiversity sustainability, with our food and entire ecosystem dependent on these. “Considering how the number of bees is declining, technologies like ours are crucial for their preservation, with simultaneous increase in beekeeper productivity. Our digital assistant enables them to manage their hives, cut losses and bring about increased yields”, Petar Pejić says.
In terms of challenges, educating beekeepers on the advantages of the digital approach and integrating new technologies such as the Beehold assistant with existing equipment is definitely among the major ones. In general terms, beekeepers already use devices to measure weight, temperature, and humidity, but are missing software solutions to integrate the data and present them to beekeepers straightforwardly with AI assistance.
Representatives of both companies look forward to continuing cooperation and potentially spreading to other European markets together, especially in countries with developed beekeeping industries such as Germany, Italy, and Spain. “After the initial integration and receiving feedback from beekeepers, we plan to work on improving the joint hardware-software system to additionally bolster productivity and sustainability of beekeeping operation”, Petar Pejić says.
Mateja Ereš underscores how there is great potential to roll out new technological solutions not only in beekeeping, but other agricultural sectors as well. ‘Fitnet’ also previously developed Book Your Honey, a service enabling sales and purchases of high-quality honey with verified analysis results, as well as Find Your Beekeeper, a service intended for those who engage in beekeeping as a hobby and want their own honey, and therefore leave care of their hives to more experienced beekeepers. They also launched BeeConnect, a regional platform for beekeepers to sell, purchase and exchange beekeeping products, equipment, and other resources, thereby facilitating networking within the community.
Cooperation between these two companies was established within the Public Call for participating in a challenge on knowledge transfer and application of innovative solutions that can be applied to various developmental challenges of regional countries. The Public Call was supported by the The Government of the Republic of Serbia within the scope of official developmental support provided to Northern Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, in order to strengthen economic potentials in these countries, and implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
[1] https://srbee.bio.bg.ac.rs/ ; https://bees-scroll.webflow.io/
