One of the insect’s worst enemies — and a significant contributor to colony collapse — is a small mite called Varroa destructor that’s as devastating as it sounds. They latch onto bees and brood, sucking the life out of them.
A handful of solutions have emerged over the past few years, including hot hives that kill the mites and robobees that replace natural pollinators.
Now, a concerned team of beekeepers and software developers from Sweden have proposed another plan. They want to build an AI-powered app called BeeScanning that would analyze images of beehives to spot the mites, then alert keepers so they could rid their hives of the mites.
