Big Bee Data with Dr. Erica Shelley (S6, E34)

S6, E34 - Big Bee Data with Dr. Erica Shelley

Nam Chi Vu: Hi. This is Nam Chi Anoche, a lifetime student of HĀNAI HIVES in North Shore, Hawaii. You are listening to  Beekeeping Today Podcast. Aloha.

Jeff Ott: Welcome to  Beekeeping Today Podcast presented by Betterbee, your source for beekeeping news, information, and entertainment. I'm Jeff Ott.

Becky Masterman: I'm Becky Masterman. Today's episode is brought to you by the bee nutrition superheroes at Global Patties. Family-operated and buzzing with passion, Global Patties, crafts protein-packed patties that'll turn your hives into powerhouse production. Picture this. Strong colonies, booming brood, and honey flowing like a sweet river. If super protein for your bees and they love it. Check out their buffet of patties, tailor-made for your bees in your specific area. Head over to www.globalpatties.com and give your bees the nutrition may deserve.

Jeff: Hey. Quick shout out to all of our sponsors whose support allows us to bring you this podcast each week without resorting to a fee-based subscription. We don't want that and we know you don't either. Be sure to check out all of our content on the website. There, you can read up on all of our guests, read our blog on the various aspects and observations about beekeeping, search for, download, and listen to over 250 past episodes, read episode transcripts, leave comments and feedback on each episode, and check on podcast specials from our sponsors.

You can find it all at www.beekeepingtodaypodcast.com. Wow, thank you, Nam Chi Vu for that great opening. Becky, now we have another State Hawaii to add on our listener opener list.

Becky: We've got an island on the map that's pretty exciting,

Jeff: Hey, I'm sorry folks, the way this map shows up, Hawaii is way out to the left, so it's there. This is exciting, it's filling in.

Becky: I hope listeners are going to the website and taking a look at that map because it's filling in quickly.

Jeff: When we started this, I just imagine filling in North America or the States. I'm excited and amazed by the number of foreign countries we already have represented on the map, and including Canada and the provinces of Canada. It's fun to see.

Becky: I think we can admit that when the email comes in with the recording, you and I both geek out about it a little bit and listen to it and we get really excited. If anybody out there wants to just make our day, record your opening and send it on in.

Jeff: Especially this time of year because the weather right now is not fun. I don't think I've seen the sun in months. It's cloudy, drizzly, and I know that much of the country is much that way. This is hard.

Becky: We see the sun maybe a little bit more than you do, but we also see that it's way too cold to go out and do anything beekeeping-related. There's nothing that's fun to do outside right now so.

Jeff: People are just getting their bees through the first winter. What are their bees doing right now? What can they envision their bees doing inside that hive?

Becky: I think the most exciting thing about what those bees are doing is that they are starting to replace their population. Even in Minnesota when it's minus 10 degrees, if it's starting at the end of January, they've turned on the heat and they're starting to raise brood again. It's a time where a lot of the bees die. They live about 200 days over the winter and so you see a lot more bead death, but at the same time they're raising their replacements and that is just about as exciting as it can get I think.

Jeff: It is. I will share with you that in one of my hives, they must be raising brewed right around the sensor because that sensor, even when it was 10 degrees outside, that sensor was reporting 93 degrees.

Becky: I love that. Go girls go, go girls go. [laughs]

Jeff: I could look outside and feel depressed because of the weather, but I'd look at the graph and say, "Okay. We're going to make it. We're going to make it. Go, go, go." [laughs]

Becky: That is just great. The thermo regulation that they do will always, for me be one of the most amazing aspects of the superorganism, that is the honeybee. I think the fact that they're able to control their temperature despite what's going on outside and even despite what we're doing to wrap them up. We give them insulation maybe, but not that much to make 92 degrees or 93 degrees it's a feet. It's pretty impressive still.

Jeff: That's why we all love on the honeybee. Hey, today's guest, do you know Dr. Erica Shelley?

Becky: I've never met Dr. Erica Shelley, but holy cow have I seen her on social media. She is a social media champion, and especially during the North American Honeybee Hive Expo, she really made it a goal to get out there and promote the conference and she is still doing it today. She pops up in my feed all the time.

Jeff: She is dynamic, that is for sure. I did get a chance to sit down and talk to her for a few minutes at the North American Honeybee Expo and we just touched on a little project that she's starting to kick off and we'll talk to her about it today and it's about her Big Bee Data Project. We'll find out a little bit more about what that entails and what's it about and we'll talk a little bit about her Protect The Bee product that she was here and talked to Kim and I about a while ago. I'm looking forward to it.

Becky: Me too. I can't wait to learn about the little project that happens to sound like a very big project.

Jeff: Very big project. All right. We'll hear from Erica right after this message from Strong Microbials.

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Jeff: While you're at the strong microbial site, make sure you click on and subscribe to  The Hive, the regular newsletter full of interesting beekeeping facts and product updates. Hey, everybody, welcome back. Sitting across the virtual  Beekeeping Today Podcast table. Joining Becky and me is Dr. Erica Shelley of Best for Bees. Erica, I just saw you a couple of weeks ago at the North American Honeybee Expo.

Dr. Erica Shelley: Yes. Definitely was there doing our thing, and I even got to chat with you there, so it's super excited to do this two times in two weeks. That's got to be a record.

Jeff: Yes, I think so. For our listeners who have not heard those daily updates from the Navi Show, tell us a little bit about yourself, your background with bees. You've been on the show before, but again remind us who you are, what you've been doing with bees, and about your current company.

Erica: I am Dr. Erica Shelley. Some people just call me Dr. Erica or Erica or whatever that bee lady, maybe some not nice things depending on who they are. I don't know but lots of names. I am the CEO and founder of Best for Bees and we are company located in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. Our city, Kitchener Waterloo was known for the invention of the Blackberry phone, and that's the first cell phone out there, so we've got pretty smart people here in town. We're about an hour outside of Toronto. We're a bee research company.

We have offered research and consulting services for 13 years now to all sorts of bee-related industries, so universities, companies, farmers, seed development companies, lots of lots of different things that we've worked with over the years focusing on both honeybees and bumblebee research. We've just been in this, this world for a long time, the research side of things, but on the private side not usually the academic side of things. We invented the ProtectaBEE a couple of years ago for bee vectoring, so bringing in products into the beehive.

We were really focused on developing a fungal powder for treatments of Varroa mites and those fungal powders are actual soil fungi that will affect the Varroa mites but not the honeybees. We needed delivery system for that. We invented our cone technology is what we call it, where you basically have a cone set going in and a cone set going out and the bees walk through that powder to deliver it into the hive.

We're still several years out from actually having any of those fungal powders available commercially. We're hoping that the group from the University of Washington and it might come out with it a little bit sooner and get some approvals there, which would be awesome. In the meantime, we've added a lot of functionality. We have over 11 uses that you can use to ProtectaBEE with. That's one of our things that we have been working on. Then the other thing that we're working on is developing a new technology software to improve bee outcomes and strengthen up our food stability across the world.

Jeff: The one thing I keyed on real quick was your reference to Washington State University. I do know that Dr. Brandon Hopkins is working with the Washington State Beekeepers Association to identify colonies to start working with [Meh... metal.. , the fungis.

Erica: Metarhizium .

[laughter]

Jeff: Yes, that's it. That's the one.

Becky: I just want to call them fungis. That sounded good. [laughs]

Erica: Fungis. I know people say fungi, I say fungi. Tomato, tomato.

Jeff: They're working to queue up that research this year. That's live information right now. That's exciting stuff.

Erica: Yes, I actually would love to find out more about that because it kind of went to a backburner for a little bit, I know. We've been waiting to hear. We sent them a ProtectaBEE a couple years ago for them to test with their fungi as well.

Jeff: Well, the fungis are playing with the ProtectaBEE, so you can expect results soon, I'm sure.

Erica: Woohoo. [laughs]

Becky: May I just ask, you said 11 different uses, and I see the pictures online, but it looks like they would be great if you're moving bees, potentially?

Erica: That's one of the uses, yes. Once all the foragers are home, you can drop in some vents and it literally takes seconds and it closes off the entire hive. That is one of many uses for the ProtectaBEE. The one that's the biggest use is the protection from predators, particularly yellow jackets, can be a big issue. It allows for tons of traffic while keeping out yellow jackets. I say yellow jackets, yellow jackets, wasps, hornets, keeps out mice, deals with skunks. It's really great for protection of the hive as well.

Becky: Does it also help them protect from robbers?

Erica: Yes. It's fantastic for that as well. The inserts that we have on there are the red, so they can't be seen very well by any insect. The hive that it goes on has to learn what we call learning the ins and outs. Then once they've got it figured out, it's really nice because they know exactly where to go in and out, but robbing bees, won't necessarily be able to easily get in there. Not only that, the small openings allow the guard bees to really be able to protect the hive as well. There's a couple of things going on there that enhance protection against robbers.

Jeff: Have you had a chance to test it against the Asian hornet or the yellow legged Asian hornet that's new to the southeast of the United States?

Erica: Yes. Well, first of all, I don't think like they haven't seen it a whole lot. Am I missing that? I think it's been spotted, but not like actually.

Jeff: Yes, it's not pervasive last I heard. I could be wrong.

Erica: Yes, we do have it being tested over in Europe, against the Vespa hornet there and oh, my gosh, I forget what his name is, but there was a French person who came and did a talk at the expo at NAHBE and he's going to be testing it for us over there because he apparently struggles with those hornets there. Previously known as the murder hornet has been renamed. [laughs]

Jeff: Actually, it's different though, right? The murder hornet was the Vespa Miranda middle alien or something like that. That was the thumb size hornet out of Southeast Asia. These are yellow legged Asian hornets. They're slightly smaller, but--

Erica: Oh, here. Yes. I'm talking about the ones over in Europe is the one I was talking about that they were testing.

Jeff: I'll be corrected. I'm sure if I'm wrong. The ones in Europe are also the yellow legged Asian hornets, not the murder hornets.

Erica: Oh, okay. Well, I may have just learned something here because I thought they were one and the same. Mostly because that's what the people were telling me at Apimondia and not because I've done any research on them.

Jeff: You can learn all sorts of things on beekeeping today podcast, Erica. I recommend you listen to it weekly.

[laughter]

Erica: It's like you talk to experts all the time, which I am definitely not an expert on the different types of hornets that are out there. My apologies.

Jeff: No, that's all right. That's only because I had so much experience, not an experience personal, but so much information in Washington state over the last three years with the introduction of the real murder hornet or what they call the northern giant hornet.

Erica: Yes, and I came and saw you at the conference and they actually were auctioning one of those things so I got to see it in person. They had a table with all of them as well, that was really impressive to see how huge it was.

Jeff: If they hit your windshield, they'd crack it.

[laughter]

The ProtectaBEEs, we've talked about that people can go back and listen to our original episode with you. We'll have the link to that in our show notes. Before we get to your Big Bee Data Project, which is why we have here today, I do want to ask clarify one thing. You say you do research, are you doing research for private companies? They give you the criteria, they're testing for it, and then your team goes out and actually develops the test, researches presents the data back.

Erica: We basically do whatever they ask us to do. Sometimes we have NDAs, so there's different things that are going on. I would say being very general, we would be going in and optimizing either what they're working on, looking at the health, the facts of what they're working with, or actually putting a new process in place for them developing a system for them.

All those things can be true, but the biggest thing is long before we've had these cameras, we've been counting these on frames, and we've been counting-- When things were really hard, we take pictures, we figure out percentages. We have to take a picture of every single side of every frame. We count bees with little clickers going in and out before, there was like all these counters to count things. We put colorful paint on the backs of bees, and then like walk around looking and marking ticking on boxes where those bees are going, Before you could put little tags on them, now you can put tags on them.

Life is so different now, in terms of research and just like, "Oh, wow, we would have saved so many hours back in the day." Not that it's been that long ago, but just even the last five years in terms of the technology, what it allows us to do and how quickly to look at things.

Jeff: Yes, back in the day, we used to have to use sharpies and put numbers on the backs of the poor bees.

Erica: And glue. We have little numbers that we glue on the back of them too. Yes. [laughs]

Becky: I used to glue them, one day old bees, north, south, east and west, with the five different colors that were available and all of the numbers that were available except for like 66, because that couldn't go both ways.

Erica: [laughs]

Becky: I mean, oh my gosh, what we used to do and the glue, yes.

Erica: Right? People are not even going to know about this, they're just going to be like, "I put my tag on there and then I can see every little way that might bee goes," because I've got basically the ideal, like those-

Jeff: The RFD tag.

Erica: - air tag. An air tag on my bee.

[laughter]

Jeff: Well, that's really cool. I bet that keeps you busy.

Becky: You mentioned the different groups that you're answering questions for or asking questions for, but are you working with commercial beekeepers too? Because I know a lot of times in their operations, they might want to try a different treatment or a different management skill, and you could put numbers to that.

Erica: All the groups that we have worked with in the past, we've never worked with like a single commercial beekeeper. We've helped with some processes for commercial beekeeping. Then now with our product, with our ProtectaBEE, we're actually starting to design a pallet design. We're working with commercial beekeepers in designing that, and then we'll be testing with them as well. That will be our first work with commercial beekeepers, where things will really help them. Generally when I say farmers, we're dealing with larger scale companies for that.

Now, I will say as much as we're talking about that's part of what we do, we've actually really shifted our efforts and now we are researchers way more for ourselves and our own objectives. We're not so much on the consulting side of things. It's kind of a different direction for us at the moment.

Jeff: Good. Well, thank you. Let's hear from our sponsor Betterbee and we'll be right back to learn all about Big-Bee Data.

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Jeff: Thanks a lot Betterbee. Erica, anybody who's listened to this show long enough knows that I like data. When someone starts talking about Big-Bee Data and how to use all those data points, and then not only gather them and hold them in their hands or see them on some sort of graph and some sort of Excel spreadsheet, use that data to actually guide decision-making to help the beekeeper be a better beekeeper, help the bees produce more honey or bee more effective in the pollination orchards or fields. What is Big-Bee Data? I'm excited. I don't know where to start, but what is Big-Bee Data?

Erica: Big-Bee Data. We call Big Ag like Big Ag Data is a thing that has been super-duper helpful in improving outcomes, whether it's for the health of the animal or crops. All those things has been really great. Big Ag Data is known to be out there. Bee Data is something that's harder to collect. It's not necessarily accurate. There's a lot of variables. There's a lot of stuff to actually measure in the Bee world. Anyways, we bring those two together, we have Big-Bee Data.

Big-Bee Data, the idea behind it is that we're going to be able to use this consolidated data coming in from beekeepers literally from around the world to move from responsive beekeeping to predictive beekeeping. It's going to change everything that we do in beekeeping in terms of management that allows us to stop reacting because we work in a very reactionary world in the beekeeping world and getting into a place where what we say is, you ask 10 beekeepers a question, you get 11 answers. That's the norm, but there is one answer that's right. There is. There really is an answer that's right.

Jeff: Well, it depends.

Erica: Right. That's it. Right, but all those depends. Once we roll, all of those depends into an answer. There is a right answer and we want to get to that right answer, and we have the computational power. We have the modeling. We have the AI. We have the machine learning now that we could actually take into account all those variables and we could get to one right answer for basically everything in beekeeping. That's the ideal that we could actually get there.

Big-Bee Data is taking in data from all the beekeepers, commercial beekeepers, our sideliners, and our hobbyists, because all of that data is super valuable, and putting it into a centralized location. Of course, obviously, this is not a room in Detroit that has all this but, obviously, in the cloud where all this data can come together and then some of the world's brightest minds along with the amazing computational power that we have, the modeling that's available there, and using AI that we can actually get to this place where we can have healthy bees and not be worried about them all the time because of weather or pests and that we can move to a little bit more similar to some other livestock operations where you're just tending your bees and not constantly worried about all the threats are out there.

We're not going to get rid of bears. There's things that we're not going to get rid of no matter how much computational stuff that we have there, but getting to a place where beekeeping is just a lot easier is important. As we see weather changes coming, the adaptability of beekeepers to those weather events or changes or even extreme weather events like fires, earthquakes, hurricanes, deep freezes, all of those things are going to be something that we need to be able to adapt to more quickly.

Becky: It's interesting Erica because you said the magic word which is livestock and there are a lot of listeners out there who do not consider themselves livestock managers, but a lot of us who are really dedicated to figuring out Big Bee health solutions, it means treating your bees as if their livestock which means giving them care. I just want to tie that to technology. Even in your ProtectaBEE, we have this old way of keeping bees and it is reactive and it's in the equipment that we've been using for a very long time without a lot of modifications, so you seem to be, not just with your business but with the Big-Bee Data effort, really trying to move us into the future which is going to be better for bees.

Erica: Or Best for Bees.

Becky: Or Best for Bees.

Jeff: Oh, SNAP!

Becky: That's the name of your company. Nice job. It's a very important mind shift as far as looking at the big picture and understanding where honeybees fit into it. Do you get a lot of resistance from beekeepers?

Erica: I would say no because maybe the people who are having the conversations with me are the people who are enthusiastic about innovation but I will say even the oldtime beekeepers. I go and I talk to a lot of bee clubs and always I'm calling old-time beekeepers. Some of them are not much older than me, but people who have been beekeeping a long time maybe are generational beekeepers or just people that really like things to be the way they've always been are sometimes resistant in the beginning but I find that through the conversations.

First of all, unless their bees are surviving 100% every year, they know things aren't the way they should be and that there is room for improvement and beekeepers, I think there's an exception but I would say, as a whole, willing to talk and listen. I think when you think about 50% of all of the beehives in the world are owned by hobbyists, that's a lot of people that own hives that are listening and are willing to change as well.

The guys who own 10,000 beehives, I will tell you, when I was at ABF, those guys didn't even look at me. They didn't want to have a conversation with me. We're talking about livestock. They've got certain practices in place. They've invested a lot of money and if they are going to move into any new technology, it really has to show its worth. Also, they have a lot to protect there as well but I would say, overall, when you ask me if people are resistant, I've not felt that resistance.

Jeff: For the the livestock comment, is a lot of people are resistant, I think especially the backyard beekeeper. I shouldn't say especially, but you'll find commonly in the backyard beekeeper where they're resistant to be calling honeybees as livestock and they're more like, "No. They're more like my little puppy dogs," but when you think about there's 60,000 puppy dogs, then you can understand that it really is a livestock corporation that you're trying to manage the entirety, not just the one.

Erica: I will say that it's not like livestock because, you know what, my sick cows are not going over and hanging out with your sick cows. In fact, we have to be even more responsible as beekeepers because our bees and their health affects all of the bees around us. If I choose not to take care of my bees, that's not just my little pet dying in my backyard or whatever you want to look at it. I'm literally affecting anyone within-- Oh my gosh, guys, I don't know if I can do a kilometer-to-mile radius here but all of those beekeepers in that area are affected by you not doing the things that you need to do.

I will say this because I should say hobbyist. Beekeeping is not a hobby. It should not be a hobby. It's a responsibility and it's a serious responsibility because you choosing to neglect your bees is affecting all the bees around you. The nice thing with some of these technologies and stuff that we are bringing in is we're hoping to give those notifications to people when there's issues in their area and make beekeepers be more responsible because it's a responsibility and you, a backyard beekeeper hobbyist, it's half of the world's hives. If you start thinking about world stability pollinator health biodiversity, all of those things are dependent on all these people who pick up this hobby and think of them as pets.

Becky: I think that we can also say though we can learn so much from the livestock industry, as far as biosecurity, we can mimic some of their practices because the safety of their animals is really dependent upon making sure that certain practices are put into play. I'm thinking turkeys and pigs. You have to be very careful about spreading pathogens, and as you said our bees go everywhere. If my bees go into somebody's dying hive to take advantage of the fact that they don't have a defense force anymore, my bees are going to also take home pathogens and Varroa. I think the livestock stories are super important in the data collection.

Erica: You're absolutely right. They're good models for us.

Becky: They're so much farther along too. They've done so much. I think if you talk to anybody outside of beekeeping in livestock and you hear the kind of data they're collecting versus a honeybee industry that's barely put our toe in the water. Thank you for doing this, Dr. Erica.

Erica: Well, and I'm going to say I am not the only thing, so in Europe, they've actually, it's supposed to be coming out this year and there's something called the EU Pollinator Hub, and they're trying to get data as well. Apimondia, they have a working group on the standardization of data on bees. They're also working towards that, but what we really struggle with is that there's a lot of private data being collected by monitors that are out there that people don't want that data shared because there is the privacy concerns, locations of hives, the true reality of how well the hives are doing.

There's insurance claims. There's a lot of complexity in sharing data. With the Big Bee Data Project, and I call it project, it's actually the Big-Bee Data Movement, we want to make this a movement where we can talk to the beekeepers and we can say, your data matters. It doesn't matter just for your high, but it matters for the world's bees. By using the monitors, by inputting data into these apps that hopefully everything will start talking together. We're working on that, getting what we call APIs so everything can actually talk to each other.

That your bit that you're doing, your drop in the bucket is going to fill that bucket and solve the problem worldwide. Not just making sure you're being a responsible beekeeper on your end, but that we can actually all work together to come to these answers.

Jeff: All right. This is the thing that confounds me about any of this, because you have all the different vendors providing sensors, you have all the different types of data coming in, how do you bring that all together into the one big data project, the movement? Apimondia, you alluded to them, they're working on the big codex. I know there's been others that have been working on BeeXML. Is that congealing? Is that coming together? Who's going to own this?

Erica: First of all, is that happening? My understanding is that the Apimondia working group is not working very well. I'm not sure if that's actually the case, but I know that it may not be moving forward very much. What we're going to do on our end here is these newer companies are starting to make sure that there's ways that these communicate, but it's the quality of the data. You have to actually figure out what's higher quality of data and what's a lower quality of data.

Those have to be weighted as that comes in especially if you're bringing in data from a lot of different places. Sometimes they're just measuring completely different things and it's not apples to apples that if I bring in temperature data, temperature data's pretty simple. If I start bringing in acoustical data, that data can be very variable or bee count data that's coming in. Just to give you like an idea, so we've got monitors that are out there. I think we've got BeeHero, BroodMinder, and other like Scales Bee Solutions. Like all these things. HiveIQ has a ton of these things.

We've got apps that will actually listen to sound as well. There's a lot of different pieces of data coming in and some of those datas may just be things that have to be thrown out, but other things could be super useful. We call this passive data. Anything that's coming in through a monitor, which is like weight, humidity, temperature, carbon dioxide, acoustics, counting bees going in and out, we talked about the possibility of seeing different pests inside the hive using cameras.

A lot of those will be what we call passive data. Where we think the value is also going to be, and that's the part that we're working on at Best for Bees, is that active data. That active record keeping where people go in and they note the percentage of frames that have bees. When they take it out, they can actually tell us what percentage has pollen, what percentage has larvae, drones present, absent, or high low.

Then of course mite tests and presence of different pests and disease inside the hive. How much honey's being produced. We have weight scales, but we can also just count and look. We can do that all old school. You don't necessarily have to have all the technology to do the Big Bee Data Project.

That's where we think we'll be able to get a lot of data on that end and combine that with that passive data, and that'll allow us to start getting to some modeling. Nectar, or you guys familiar with Nectar out of Quebec? They're not nectar in general, but it's a company called Nectar Technologies. [crosstalk]

[laughter]

Becky: We'll put it in the show notes.

Erica: They have just little codes, these NFC tags that you put on the front of a hive and then when the bee manager is out there, definitely for commercial operations that are involved in pollination, they basically take in data hive, alive, dead, pretty simple data that they're adding in there. Then they do move these hives all around. Nico Coallier , I hope I'm saying his name right, he did the very first data modeling paper, it just came out I think last month showing that they are able to look at pollution levels and predict survival rates of colonies pretty accurately, just using a couple of pieces of data.

If you can do that with just a couple of pieces of data, you can start imagining what we can do. I say couple of pieces of data, they had lots and lots and lots of hives, but just a couple of data points, different types of data points that they were bringing in to get to that. They had a lot of other data they collected as well. They have sensors, they're no longer doing the sensors, but they had sensors too. The answer in that whole research is that it didn't take much to get to that prediction of survival or non survival based on pollution levels.

If we have something that's that simple, you can imagine with a lot more data and overlaying it with all of these other factors like weather, biodiversity, pollution, pesticide, crop presence, nearby hives, and I like to think about it. This is going to totally age me here, but when we were in school, they had these overhead projectors and you put transparency down. Am I too old for you Becky, on that one or were you--

Becky: Oh, no, I'm right there with you.

Erica: Oh, you're right there with me, okay.

Becky: All about those transparency.

Jeff: I don't understand a word of what you're talking about, but I'll go with it.

[laughter]

Erica: Transparency, this is just the best way to think about it, but you'd have like the first transparency. The first transparency would be like your bee high. Then as you add different things where it would be the weather and the biodiversity and the genetics and the pest we're going to have thousands upon thousands of transparencies on top of this first one.

It'll look crazy, but when we start bringing in all that data and analyzing it, we're going to be able to get to some of the answers that we've never been able to get to before.

Jeff: That sounds exciting. Just for the record, that was with Max Journey and Nico Coyer and we had them on the show talking about their technology and what they're doing back last July. Folks want to check that out. We'll have the link in the show notes as well.

Becky: Erica, I think people are getting excited about this. Do you have an immediate ask for those backyard beekeepers who, when they listen to you, they say, sign me up, or what do I need to do?

Erica: Well, right now, the more data that we can get is better. If you're buying products, I'm going to just point out a couple of companies that are common in the United States, but if you're getting products from BroodMinder, BeeHero, HiveIQ is a new one coming out and there's a few other beehives that have monitors or be solutions like these scales, ask them, are you going to share my data if I ask you to share my data to the Big-Bee Data Movement?

Is my data going to matter on a big level? Because at the end of the day, we need the data from all of these places and they don't necessarily want to give it away. It might be worth something to them. They might be spit outing their privacy that we don't share your data or maybe it's even work for them to create these APIs so that things talk, but we're going to work with them on that.

They're going to do what their customers ask them to do. If the customers are saying, "We want to be part of Big-Bee Data movement. Does your product have a stamp on it of Big-Bee Data movement?" That's where we want to go right now, is start pushing these companies and that we're going to see more smart hives. We're going to see more and more technologies out there. We want to say, "This is awesome that you're making these technologies, but what can we do for good?" What's the tech for good in this? Let's all work together and actually solve, I call it the bee crisis. Solve the bee crisis. Secure our food, move to protect predictive beekeeping, make beekeeping easy, not make it like some big mystery.

"Woo, what do you actually do? Nobody knows." Let's make it simple and let's make the bees live. This is something that we can do. That's my more immediate ask. Also, get me to come in and talk to your group because we're developing our product based on beekeeper feedback. I'm not saying this is how I think it should work. I want to know what is it going to be that I can make that will put you in your pocket that will make it so that you actually get those data points. We hear voice people really want to be able to talk. What's out there right now is not great. That would require a lot of work to get to voice. We're really listening to the beekeepers and taking notes and working with our teams and like I said, we're in a big tech center where we are here.

We can computer, we can code, we can make things look pretty, but it doesn't matter if you don't put the data in there. We've got to get it so that people want to pull out their phones or pull out their iPads or their Chromebooks if you're on that side of things or their computers. They want to put in the data because it matters. Not just for their hives, which it will help their hives too, but because it matters for the hives and not the hives, but the bees all around the world. Eventually, like our food, if we see large climate change events if we see new pests come out, anything like that, that we're ready, and we're not going to be decimated by one thing because we can actually all talk to each other and react quickly.

Jeff: Well, we've talked a lot about Big-Bee Data talked about ProtectaBEE and Best for Bees. Is there anything we haven't talked about you want to tell us in the last couple minutes here of the show?

Erica: Oh, geez. Are we going to talk about the Beekeeper movie?

[laughter]

I went to go see the [crosstalk]

Jeff: Oh, look at the time.

[laughter]

Thank you Erica for joining us today on Beekeeping Today Podcast and for putting up with our questions and for being here. I look forward to having you back learn more.

Erica: Well, thank you so much.

[music]

Jeff: Dr. Erica Shelley, she's got a lot going. She's got the ProtectaBEE, the Big-Bee Data, the research she's done. It's fun.

Becky: It is. It's fun and it's very impressive. I love the fact that she's actually using her ProtectaBEE proceeds to fund another project, the Big Bee Data Project to support honeybees. She's really got our honeybees in her best interest, which is great news for us.

Jeff: I agree, Becky. The whole Big-Bee Data that is still-- I hope she is able to crack that nut because as she pointed out, there's multiple people working on it. It's going to take an industry effort unseen, I think, in many industries to get the collaboration and the cooperation between different parties with different interests and different goals to share that data

Becky: Different countries.

Jeff: In different countries, to share that data to a common interest, because everyone in today's world, since the 1990s when the computers came online, information is the currency of the InfoAge. The intrinsic belief is I collect data, I sell data, I never ever give away data. She is going against that current and saying, if we all collect the data and put it into one big repository in the sky and the cloud, as she said, then we can work that data to improve the health of the bees, protect our pollinators, protect our crops, and we're going to all benefit from that.

Becky: That's really well said, Jeff. I think you just described a honeybee hive. She's trying to get us all to work together for a common good.

Jeff: More power to you, Dr. Erica Shelley. That about wraps it up for this episode. Before we go, I want to encourage our listeners to follow us and rate us five stars on Apple Podcasts, wherever you download and stream the show. Even better, write a review and let other beekeepers looking for a new podcast know what you like. You can get there directly from our website by clicking on the reviews along the top of any webpage.

We want to thank our regular episode sponsors, Betterbee, Global Patties, Strong Microbials, and Northern Bee Books for their generous support. Finally, and most importantly, we want to thank you, the  Beekeeping Today Podcast listener for joining us on this show. Feel free to leave us questions and comments at the leave a comment section under each episode on the website. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks a lot, everybody.

[00:46:20] [END OF AUDIO]