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Dr. Jerry Bromenshenk and Dr. David Firth from the Univerisity of Montana are working together on a new application for beekeepers called . The application uses artificial intelligence (AI) to listen to the sound and based upon complex...
Dr. Jerry Bromenshenk and Dr. David Firth from the Univerisity of Montana are working together on a new application for beekeepers called Bee Health Guru. The application uses artificial intelligence (AI) to listen to the sound and based upon complex algorithms and learned history, can provide a diagnosis of the colony's health. Simply amazing.
Jerry and David join Jeff & Kim on this episode to talk about the 
history of the technology and the ongoing research of the technology under-pinnings of the cell phone app.
At the beginning of the podcast, you can hear Jeff listening to a audio clip of a 2-deep colony of bees at rest. Then suddenly, no... instantly, their tone changes. Could you tell what happened? The audio file was provided by Dr. Bromenshenk. In the recording, a colony of honey bees 'at rest' are given one (1) drop of toluene. The communication through the hive was instantaneous. Bees communicate more than we knew and the Bee Health Guru app hopes to help us translate just what they're saying!
Links and websites mention in the episode:
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This episode is brought to you by Global Patties! Global Patties is a family business that manufactures protein supplement patties for honey bees. Feeding your hives protein supplement patties will help 
ensure that they produce strong and health colonies by increasing brood production and overall honey flow. Global offers a variety of standard patties, as well as custom patties to meet your specific needs. Visit them today at http://globalpatties.com and let them know you appreciate them sponsoring this show with Jerry and David!
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We hope you enjoy this podcast and welcome your questions and comments: questions@beekeepingtodaypodcast.com
Thanks to Bee Culture, the Magazine of American Beekeeping, for their support of The Beekeeping Today Podcast. Available in print and digital at www.beeculture.com
Thank you for listening!
Podcast music: Young Presidents, "Be Strong"
PhD, Research Professor, Online Instructor, CEO
Educational and Research Background:
Dr. Bromenshenk has Ph.D. in entomology and 49 years of experience working with honey bees worldwide. For 20 years, he was the statewide director of Montana's EPSCoR (Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research) in energy research and education, co-founded Bee Alert Technology, Inc., a technology transfer and contract research company, and was President of the Western Apicultural Society in 2004, 2014, and again in 2019-2022.
He pioneered the use of honey bees for pollution monitoring and the liquid nitrogen-freeze assay for bee hygienic behavior. He and his research teams:
- developed and patented Smart Hives for bee management,
- Acoustic Scanning for detection and diagnosis of honey bee pests and diseases,
- Conditioning (training) of bees to search for landmines, IEDs, drug labs, and dead bodies, and
- Decimeter resolution LIDAR for locating, tracking, and mapping forager bees.
Now semi-retired from the University of Montana he continues to teach as the lead for UM’s Online Master Beekeeping program. In 2019, his Bee Alert team launched a successful Kickstarter project to fund an ongoing citizen science project to detect and map honey bee diseases worldwide and tune their Bee Health Guru acoustic app (www.beehealth.guru).
Dr. Bromenshenk has several published chapters in peer-reviewed monographs and eighty-nine (89) articles listed under Google Scholar. He is now working with a UM team and a team in Manhattan, KC, on a beekeeping course for US soldiers and others in… Read More
