Beekeeping was relatively unknown to Kelton Temby until a swarm of the flying insects made a home in the wall of his Santa Barbara garage.
His father cautioned Temby against becoming an urban beekeeper, but something about the honeybees spoke to the Australian transplant and engineer of telemedicine robots.
Temby and a friend rescued the swarm and created a beehive in his yard — a collection that has since grown to four hives, each hosting about 40,000 bees.
The experience let Temby see the benefits of bees, mostly for agriculture, but also the challenges facing shrinking populations.
That’s why he and others at Santa Barbara-based Keltronix, Inc. have launched EyesOnHives, a cloud-based analytics platform that allows beehive owners, scientists and researchers to keep eyes on bees for early warning signs of trouble.
A powerful camera and computer are placed at the beehive and connected to the internet, where beekeepers can remotely check on populations and use Temby’s algorithm to detect behavior patterns and disruptions.
“Can software help the bees?” Temby asked.
“That’s what’s really transforming healthcare right now. The beekeeper is able to not only see their bees but to see an activity profile. The real issue and challenge is that when a beehive dies, it’s not just a few bees dying. It’s survival of the species.”
He said there are an estimated 2.5 million managed beehives in the U.S., but populations have seen consistent losses of about 30 percent every year since 2006, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
That die-off number jumped to 42 percent in 2014.
Drought is the major impact to local beehives, said Paul Cronshaw, president of the Santa Barbara Beekeepers Association.
Drought leads to poor nutrition, which is one of three other problematic Ps: pesticides, pests and pathogens.
People should care, Cronshaw said, because bees are responsible for pollinating about a third of all food, including oranges, apples, almonds, avocados, chestnuts and coffee.
He sees EyesOnHives as a tool to revolutionize beekeeping, which is currently a hobby for folks mostly in middle to older age.
“We have to teach the next generation,” said Cronshaw, a 40-year beekeeping veteran.
“It’s just a really cool technology to be able to pick it up on your cell phone. Kelton’s project is thinking outside the box.”
As of this week, EyesOnHives had 15 systems in the field, with one of them at Cronshaw’s place.
The company is launching a Kickstarter campaign Monday to raise $12,000 to place 30 more systems in front of beehives for a year, adding to a growing database of over 350,000 videos and data.
So far, beekeepers report EyesOnHives has led to timely interventions in 64 percent of monitored hives.
Temby said the platform also encourages beekeepers to jointly analyze and tackle behavioral problems.
“If you can get a sample of bees… you may be able to identify what kind of poison the bees are suffering from,” he said.
“We might be able to intervene in time. We’re trying to create a community of beekeepers who can monitor a metric. To really get enough data, we need other people’s help.
“We’re running out of time to save the bees. We’re really dependent on the bees and right now they’re depending on us.”
— Noozhawk staff writer Gina Potthoff can be reached at gpotthoff@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.