Complimentary data to benefit the study of honey bee health worldwide
SALEM, N.H. (PRWEB) SEPTEMBER 19, 2019
Weather Source, the leader in providing weather and climate technologies for business intelligence, is pleased to announce it has agreed to share world-class, hyper-local weather data with Broodminder, which specializes in the wireless gathering, monitoring, and disseminating of public hive information to enhance honey bee health.
In addition to providing weather and climate data for its revenue-generating customers, Weather Source is committed to sharing its data free of charge with worthy causes and organizations. Weather Source is providing complimentary OnPoint Weather data to Broodminder’s nonprofit arm, Bee Counted, which offers a Global Citizen Science website for public data access.
“Weather Source recognizes the importance of honey bees and the stability of nature’s pollen-transporting machines,” said Weather Source Sr. Vice President of Business Development Craig Stelmach. “Without hesitation, we agreed to provide Broodminder with data because we care about their mission and ensuring the future of agriculture and this critical component of our ecosystem are protected.”
As part of its citizen science campaign, Broodminder has delivered more than 13,000 hive-monitoring sensors. The sensor data is shared via the public domain for use by any researcher or interested party, and reveals three major insights: beehive trends; environmental changes affected by the amount of nectar bees bring back to the hive from flowering plants; and, based on beehive temperature, whether a new brood is being raised, which is significant for sustainability.
The addition of weather data will help the community learn even more about honey bees.
“How weather data plays into all of this is crucial,” said Broodminder Founder and CEO Rich Morris. “For one thing, bees won’t go flying on rainy days. This is an important factor for studying the weight of the hive. Gaining access to Weather Source’s hyper-local weather data is terrific.”
In turn, Broodminder is sharing temperature data from its sensors back to Weather Source, adding another data stream to the vast array of potential information offered by the burgeoning Internet of Things (IoT).
“This is beneficial to Weather Source as additional data points on the ground for product accuracy and validation,” Stelmach said. “We are excited about IoT data and this is one dataset (i.e., temperature) from one network. Weather Source has been adding more unique weather sensing technologies. The more data we collect from more networks, the better our products will be and the more everyone will benefit.”
Morris said understanding how weather affects honey bees will help his team develop interventions and ultimately generate positive results.
About Weather Source
Weather Source help clients leverage weather and climate technologies for business intelligence. Our mission is to make hyper-local weather and climate data accessible around the globe and across industries. Our passion is working with companies to leverage weather and climate data to develop weather strategies that ultimately reduce waste, increase ROI, fine-tune logistics, optimize marketing strategy, and improve resource planning. To learn more, visit the Weather Source website and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
About Broodminder
BroodMinder is the industry leader in the wireless gathering, monitoring, and disseminating of public domain hive information to enhance honey bee health. The BroodMinder-CS enables this data to be shared anonymously, providing new insights into hive distress and new interventions to improve outcomes.
