- 8 minutes ago
Americans consume more than 600 million pounds of honey each year, so much that honey has to be imported to meet the demand. Honey depends on healthy bees, which are facing an uphill battle domestically, with about 50% of bee colonies dying in the US every year. Pests, like the Varroa mite, and environmental factors put hives at risk. So Nate's Honey and Sweet Harvest Foods are turning to artificial intelligence to help keep bees healthy. They use AI detection devices to monitor the sounds hives make. And they've employed a robotic hive that helps determine if mites are spreading. But can these technologies actually help the US make more honey?
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00:00This bottling plant can hold up to 30 million pounds of honey at a time.
00:05But keeping it supplied starts with keeping bees alive.
00:10And today, that's harder than ever.
00:14Bees face a growing number of threats to their survival.
00:18About 50 percent of bee colonies die each year in the U.S.
00:22That affects a lot more than just honey farmers.
00:25One in every three bites of food we eat directly benefits from bee pollination.
00:31Can you give me a picture of what the inside of a grocery store would look like
00:37if we don't keep these bees healthy?
00:39Yeah, so there'd be no color.
00:41It would be a pretty bleak place to be going, yeah.
00:45Which is why Sweet Harvest Foods is betting on artificial intelligence
00:49to help keep its honeybees healthy.
00:52Like these robot hives.
00:54So can AI actually help beekeepers spot trouble earlier?
00:59Keep colonies healthy.
01:01And ultimately get bees to produce more honey.
01:07So we are deep in rural Montana right now.
01:11And we've been driving for about 100 miles.
01:14And as you can see, there are practically no buildings in sight, if any.
01:19But what we do keep seeing are these glusters of bee hives, kind of spaced all around these
01:25hills and fields.
01:27So we're going to go see a couple of them today.
01:30That's where we met Matt Halbgawax, whose family has worked with bees since the 1400s.
01:36We made it.
01:38Yeah, this is great, beautiful morning.
01:41Bees for some reason, they like lighter colors and smooth materials.
01:47So right now I am their biggest nightmare.
01:50You're a little bit of their enemy for now.
01:53How many times would you say you've been stung?
01:56Thousands, probably tens of thousands of times.
02:00Today, Matt leads Nate's Hives, the nation's largest beekeeper.
02:05Managing six billion bees in hives like these across the country.
02:10I think we're ready.
02:11At first glance, it's hard to picture a role for AI here.
02:16Until you see what Matt is up against.
02:19So here, we're just warning the bees that we're coming.
02:21Give them a little bit of, we'll just kind of tell them, hey, we're coming.
02:26How many bees are in there?
02:28Oh, at least 60,000.
02:30In one?
02:31In one.
02:32Look at all that honey.
02:33That's just a single colony.
02:36This yard has 64, each in its own stack of wooden boxes.
02:41Keep in mind that a bee in its lifetime can produce about one-twelfth of a tablespoon of honey.
02:48So it takes a lot of bees to put honey on the table.
02:52Bees only start collecting nectar to produce honey midway through their lives.
02:57And a lot can go wrong before a bee ever gets there.
03:01Things like drought, weather stress, exposure to pesticides in the landscape.
03:08Bees are very complex.
03:09You know, they're very tightly linked to the environments that they are in.
03:14Kelly Kilhanick studies bee health.
03:23A typical checkup looks something like this.
03:26Kelly and Matt go frame by frame, looking at how evenly the queen bee has laid her eggs.
03:32One clue to the colony's health.
03:34The queen is so important.
03:37She's integral.
03:37She's the hub of the wheel.
03:39So as we look at this frame, the queen was very organized.
03:44Tabs?
03:44Oops.
03:45Yeah.
03:46Wow.
03:47So each of these frames about a thousand bees.
03:50I never thought I'd be holding a thousand bees.
03:54But these days, even a busy hive can hide something deadly.
03:59A tiny mite called Pharoa.
04:01It's very similar to a tick in humans.
04:04It feeds on the bees, but it also vectors viruses to the bees that can be very harmful
04:08and detrimental to their health.
04:10The mite first appeared in the U.S. in the 1980s, after bees were imported from overseas.
04:17Then it spread quickly stateside because these colonies are constantly on the move.
04:23Farmers all over America rent the bees to pollinate their crops.
04:27A business that accounts for about 50% of a beekeeper's revenue.
04:32In January, they get moved to California to pollinate almonds.
04:35We send bees to Texas and Florida, and then they come to the Midwest, you know,
04:40kind of late spring, early summer.
04:41It can be a little stressful for the hives to be loaded onto the truck and to be moved like
04:47that.
04:48They can get hot, you know, it can decrease their population a little bit.
04:53Nate says it does its best to keep the bees comfortable.
04:57If a Pharoa mite gets in, it can wipe out an entire bee colony in a matter of weeks.
05:03But when hives are scattered across huge distances, a lot can happen between checkups.
05:09By the time a beekeeper returns and sees an obvious problem, it may already be too late.
05:15That's where AI could help.
05:18And the simplest tool to detect these mites sits on something beekeepers already carry.
05:24A smartphone.
05:25When you put your phone in there and it starts listening, what is it hearing that allows it to
05:32make the determination?
05:34It's hearing much of what we're hearing when we open the hive.
05:37We're hearing, you know, the buzzing of the bees.
05:41The AI recording tool Nate's testing can detect very subtle changes that a human ear might miss.
05:48A healthy queen keeps the hive organized, creating a steadier buzz like this.
05:59If she's sick or gone, the bees can become more sporadic.
06:07They're a little more confused because they're a little bit lacking direction without a queen.
06:12So there is a unique sound to a queenless hive.
06:16The goal with AI is to identify problems earlier on so they can allow us to be a little bit
06:22more
06:23predictive and proactive than we've been able to be historically.
06:26Where do you see the limits of AI being?
06:29Yeah.
06:29There's always going to have to be people involved in order to turn that data into a management practice.
06:37So beekeepers have to make lots of different choices every day, all the time.
06:42Another tool they're testing is this robotic hive.
06:46Here, four bee colonies live inside a single system.
06:49About once a week, the machine removes every frame and photographs both sides.
06:54AI then searches those images for mites on individual bees.
06:59You know, historically what we've done is you actually have to take a sample of about 300 bees from
07:04the hive and you have to physically shake the sample of bees to dislodge the mites from the bees.
07:10And that's how you kind of count how many mites are in the colony.
07:13And that was a slow process too.
07:16And so the idea is that the robot can kind of act as a sentry to let us know
07:21earlier if the mite load is starting to increase so that we can come out to the yard and take
07:27care of it.
07:28We weren't allowed to disclose the technology powering these hives.
07:31I don't think we'll ever get to a place where all the hives look like this.
07:35The idea behind this specifically is to have one of these in each yard to sort of act as
07:41a representative for the rest of the hives in the yard.
07:44Right now, beekeepers use these QR codes to log each hive's health over time.
07:50Nate's plans to use that data to help breeders raise queens from colonies
07:54that are the most resilient and produce the most honey.
07:58Right now, the USD averages are about 50 pounds per colony in the United States.
08:0330 years ago, it used to be 85 pounds or so. Can we get that back there?
08:09Harvesting starts with beekeepers removing the surplus honey that bees have stored at the top of the hives.
08:16From the bee yard, those boxes are trucked into what they call a tempering room.
08:21You feel the heat just putting your arm in. It is hot in here.
08:27We want to keep it warm because, as you know, honey is very viscous.
08:31And so we need the honey to flow out of the comb and into the tank.
08:36So how much honey would you say?
08:40You're going to have to stop and let me count.
08:42We can do that. No, that's totally fine.
08:46Yeah, okay. One, two, three. One, two, three. Four, five, six.
08:52After some calculating, we landed on this being about 100 pallets,
08:57each carrying roughly 1,500 pounds of honey.
09:01So think about how many bees were involved in making
09:05all of the honey in here.
09:06Hundreds of thousands. Millions.
09:08Millions of bees.
09:09Millions of bees.
09:10Millions of bees.
09:12I cannot believe that I'm literally just eating it straight from the hive,
09:19and this is how good it tastes.
09:21Next, these boxes go into the extraction room.
09:25Bees seal each cell of honey with a thin wax cap.
09:30That's what this machine gets rid of first.
09:33This facility can run through roughly 1,000 boxes a day.
09:37Across its whole network, Nate's hives can process over 200,000 boxes over a season.
09:45We want to work like a beehive, so if everybody has a job and everybody can do every job,
09:52that gives you a lot of respect for your coworkers.
09:56And then the frames go into this spinner, which uses centrifugal force to pull out the honey.
10:02So they're just going nonstop, essentially, all day.
10:09Machines strain out the wax and other debris.
10:12But nothing here goes to waste.
10:18That is a lot less sticky than I expected.
10:23That's the beeswax.
10:24So don't stick your finger in there, but I'm going to.
10:27So that's hot wax.
10:28What are you going to make with this?
10:31Most of it will go to candle making. Some of it will go to cosmetics.
10:41The cleaned honey is collected into these 3300-pound fats.
10:46It's almost hard to comprehend how little the honey is manipulated.
10:52It's such a fresh product.
10:54If your ancestors in the 1400s were to see something like this,
11:01what do you think they'd say?
11:04And the answer, standing in front of a vat like this, wasn't what I expected.
11:10What would be the most intriguing is how little beekeeping has changed since they were doing it.
11:16And I think in a way that gives us a connection almost to our past,
11:22right, and maybe even to our future, that some things never change.
11:27Even here, the old rhythm holds.
11:30Once all the honey is spun out, these wooden frames head back to the hives to be filled again.
11:38For the honey, the journey is just beginning.
11:41It's pumped into bulk containers that are trucked hundreds of miles to this bottling plant in Minnesota.
11:48The bees are doing the work, right? It is our jobs to protect what the bees have already done.
11:53The 360-square-foot facility is operated by Sweet Harvest Foods, which owns Nate's Honey and Hives.
12:01It's about the size of six football fields.
12:04Robert Dennehy has worked for the company for 11 years.
12:08Everything you see down the aisles here are honey products.
12:12Everything. All of this is honey.
12:14Everything you see. Everything that is here.
12:15And this only represents about three weeks' worth of inventory for us here at Sweet Harvest.
12:21No way.
12:21It's mind-boggling.
12:23Honey consumption in the U.S. has doubled, almost doubled in the last 10 years,
12:28and consumers just can't seem to get enough of it.
12:31Today, only about 20% of the honey consumed in the U.S. is produced domestically.
12:38What we're going to do now is travel down our international highway of honey transport.
12:43That's what I call this lane.
12:44Is there like a reason for the different colors, like the red, blue, black?
12:48I love that you asked that question.
12:49Often it is a different country of origin coming through.
12:53So it takes the world, right?
12:55So we have a relationship to the globe, and we work in harmony with all the different countries
13:00that are extracting honey.
13:02One thing that a lot of individuals may not understand about honey is it's in everything.
13:07It's not just in food.
13:08It's in makeup.
13:09It's in medication.
13:11But before any of this honey reaches consumers,
13:14the company needs to know exactly what's inside it.
13:18Samples are tested for pesticides, antibiotics, pollen,
13:22and any ingredient that would compromise the honey's purity.
13:25Every single load gets tested without fail.
13:28This isn't a, trust us, we're doing the right thing.
13:31If anyone were ever to come in here and pull a sample of honey and say,
13:34hey, I think something's going on here, we can open up
13:37an independent third-party labs test and say,
13:39this is what's going on, or this is how it tested.
13:43Once it passes the checks, the honey can move into processing.
13:48So we walked in, and it's real — like, you feel how the temperature went up.
13:53It is really hot in here.
13:55Yes, honey is naturally crystallizing as it ages.
13:58So it becomes incredibly difficult to handle.
14:01To keep it runny, it's 90 degrees in here.
14:05We're going to be needing these.
14:07Yeah, it's a little warmer in here, is it not?
14:12It is a recipe for success.
14:15Then batches get blended together inside an oven that's bigger than a New York studio apartment.
14:20Yeah, you can probably fit a couple of them in there, to be honest. Yes.
14:25No two batches taste or look exactly the same.
14:29Once the honey is poured in here, a special software system checks its flavor and color,
14:35then recommends which of these giant tanks it should go into to keep the blend consistent.
14:41We don't want all of this hard work up till now to be jeopardized because of human error.
14:47So machines are less likely to make mistakes in this context than people.
14:54Absolutely.
14:54To prevent tech.
14:55Tech allows us to be consistent.
14:57Just one of these tanks holds about 70,000 pounds of honey.
15:02That'll make 70,000 16-ounce bottles.
15:06Wild.
15:07And this entire tank is going to get bottled today.
15:11We can ultimately select the filling line that we're transferring to.
15:16And what's really neat about the system is it'll tell us which travel path our honey is taking.
15:22It's like a little honey GPS system.
15:25Exactly.
15:25Do you ever, like, just nerd out over this?
15:28I geek out all day. I mean, this is my pride and joy.
15:32Many producers heat their honey a lot to help it flow through these pipes and into bottles.
15:38But Nate's keeps its honey raw, limiting the heat to preserve the natural enzymes.
15:44And at the bottling line, that comes with a trade-off.
15:48So in terms of how fast the bottles get filled, right, for raw honey, is that slower?
15:54I love that you asked that question. Yes. So for raw honey, it is naturally cooler product,
16:00which then becomes more viscous, right? It's thicker.
16:03So it does take longer for us to produce that.
16:07Let me grab a bottle here.
16:09Every 30 minutes, workers pull bottles from the line to check temperature
16:13and make sure the honey isn't being overheated.
16:16And it takes about 10 seconds before you know where you're at for a total temperature.
16:20The product is very precious to us. We hold it just like we would our own children, right?
16:25It's precious. You want to ensure that this product gets into the bottle
16:29and gets into the bottle correctly the first time.
16:32This line is bottling organic. To qualify as that, the hives supplying this honey
16:38need miles of wild or organic farmland around them to limit pesticide exposure.
16:44But that's so hard to find in the continental U.S. that Nate's and all other American hunting
16:50processors need to source it from overseas. Then label where it comes from.
16:56India, Brazil, Mexico. So this will never say United States.
17:01USA does not create organic product.
17:04That is so crazy to me. Still, I think that's probably been the most shocking part of this entire
17:09experience. From there, the finished bottles are packed up and moved into the warehouse.
17:16It looks like it just disappeared. And if you want to look through this window,
17:20you'll actually see the robot hard at work.
17:26That gives Terminator vibes. Terminator vibes, absolutely. It's not as scary as the Terminator.
17:32It's here to help us. There's one more way AI could help beekeepers in the future. And it takes us
17:40back to the very beginning of the process. Sweet Harvest and Nates are exploring how AI could help
17:46decide where to put honeybees in the first place. Right now, beekeepers consider weather, historical
17:51performance, and what they can see around a potential bee yard. And so this board attempts to do those
17:58things and works as sort of a scratch pad, if you will, or a whiteboard forest. But in the future,
18:05satellite imagery analyzed by AI could identify major nectar sources like clover, alfalfa, and canola,
18:13then determine whether those plants are actually blooming. It could even help identify areas that
18:19may be more vulnerable to pests. And so we want to track all of that.
18:23And we'll be able to plug technology in with near real-time satellite data.
18:29It's not going to be a perfect solution, but if you can do it in advance and identify the yards
18:33you think are going to be most productive, it saves you costs, it gives you better yields.
18:38For now, the final decision still rests with the beekeepers.
18:42If bees could talk to us, what do you think they would tell us about their experience today
18:48versus their experience maybe like 10 years ago?
18:52Hmm. I hope that they would ask us, why have you not solved the problem of honeybee mortality?
19:04If a cattle rancher walks out into the field and sees half of his cattle dead in the field,
19:11it's shocking, it's sad, it's devastating.
19:14Bee lovers like Matt and Kelly hope AI may be part of the solution.
19:19And the stakes go far beyond honey.
19:22No bees, no life. Because if the bees disappear, it's hard to live the life.
19:30They have a very, very fragrant smell. You can imagine that if you smelled that,
19:37a bee would just want to eat it up.
19:38Oh, no, yeah.
19:39It's a bee.
19:39It's a bee.
19:39Yeah.
19:40You can see they have fish, they have a big one coming out.