About

30 July 2018

Honey Bees are the main pollinators of flowering plants, and according to Defra’s 2011 Governmental report ‘Biodiversity dependencies on pollinators’ pollination by insects is essential to maintaining plant genetic diversity. Biodiversity and plant diversity being a key component of both the RCUK GCRF Strategy, and is listed as topic 15 in the UN Global Goals for Sustainable Development (SDGs).

Honey Bees are also critically important for sustainable agriculture – another GCRF Strategy and Challenge Area. Globally, 9.5% of the total economic value of agricultural production for human consumption comes from insect pollination. This amounted to just under $200 billion in 2005. The value of crops pollinated by bees in the U.S. alone was estimated at $14.6 billion in 2000. Further, the UK Governments July 2013 report on The value of Bees to the economy estimates the economic value of pollinator services to be ‘in the order of hundreds of millions of GBP’; making it a key aspect of agri-food production both in terms of sustainability and food security.

However, honey bees face a number of natural and man-made environmental threats as detailed in the Defra ‘Contingency Plan for Plant and Bee Health in England 2017’. These threats place the environment, biodiversity, sustainability, and food security in question.

The BeeLife Platform is the University’s Research Apiary. Initiated in 2016 / 2017, with the intention of providing a test-bed for technical solutions which address these strategic threats and so support the GCRF Strategy and the UK Governments ’National Pollinator Strategy 2014-2024’. BeeLife is centred in Computer Science with 10 voluntary bee keepers – and a waiting list of 20 more – to perform weekly hive maintenance and record the ground truth of the hive(s) state.

Coalescing around this platform is an informal grass roots network of researchers across the University with an interest in social responsibility, sustainability, population health, agri-food, and food security and how technology can be leveraged to better address specific issues related to their research domain; or how designing technology for these end-application can push forward their technology.

Aims & Objectives

In this case, the BeeLife platform supports research at the intersection of technology, social responsibility, green impact, and agri-food. The platform as three main objectives:

  1. To Remove barriers to funding of cross-domain research projects in the area by:
    1. providing a research platform to enable unfunded pilots to collect enough data to transition to externally funded proposals; and by
    2. enabling proposals for external funding to include BeeLife as a component of grants removing the need to set up and maintain a project specific Hive or Apiary.
  2. To Create and support a university wide research network around the platform such that multi-disciplinary work and be fostered.
    1. Monthly networking lunches to facilitate connections between researchers; and by
    2. Invited lectures from key academics in the N8 to facilitate cross institutional links.
  3. To Engage with communities, demonstrate our work has impact, and ensure our research and discovery make a positive difference to society.
    1. fostering a citizen science network;
    2. talks at local district ‘British Bee Keeping Associations’ (24k members UK total);
    3. outreach and engagement which Schools via ‘Computing at Schools NW Centre’; and by
    4. public lectures ‘Cafe Scientifique’ and ‘Pint of Science’.