IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2019 - 9

a subsidy, spent four years working on
developing the technology that would
enable beekeepers to receive the crucial
information.

Edwards Murphy meeting with Prince Charles when he visited her alma mater,
University College Cork, in June 2018.

JONATHAN FLEURY

After a slew of awards for her work, in-
cluding recognition from the IEEE, IBM,
the Irish Laboratory Awards, Google,
and the Global Entrepreneurship Sum-
mit, as well as publications and media
attention, the project began to take shape
as a potential business opportunity. "I
was interviewed on national radio, and
then we began getting contacted by bee-
keepers who said they wanted wireless
sensors in their beehives or asked if they
could buy the technology," explains Ed-
wards Murphy. "That's when I thought
maybe this had use beyond just re-
search technology."
She founded ApisProtect in 2017, a
company aimed at creating a science-driv-
en solution to improve the yield of com-
mercial beekeeping, with two cofounders:
Dr. Pádraig Whelan, chief science officer,
and Andrew Wood, chairman. "We've cre-
ated a device about the size of a VHS tape,
though I wish I could give a more modern
example!" laughs Edwards Murphy. The
device, which has temperature, humid-
ity, carbon dioxide, sound, and accelera-
tion sensors, is inserted into the beehive
and collects data. Then, a combination of
several kinds of long-range radio is used
to transmit the data back to ApisProtect.
"One of the biggest challenges we've
had so far is communication," says Ed-
wards Murphy. "Beehives are in the mid-
dle of nowhere, almost universally, so a
cellular network doesn't always work.
Once the data is transmitted back to our
servers, we use machine learning to essen-
tially identify what's going on inside the
beehive, which hives are performing well
in relation to one another, and attempt to
determine problems."
The end result is a report back to the
beekeeper that is meaningful in terms of
how to maximize the pollination revenue
and increase honey yield. This includes

DARAGH MACSWEENEY PROVISION

A Business Idea Forms

A hive after beekeepers installed an ApisProtect monitor.

smart alerts with actionable insights to
brief beekeepers on the condition of their
hives, identify problem colonies, and sug-
gest a variety of actions to keep colonies
healthy, helping the proprietors to save
time and cultivate healthier hives. In
other words, "we don't just give them raw
data," clarifies Edwards Murphy. "A bee-
keeper would rather just go inspect the

JUNE 2019

beehive than go through pages and pages
of graphs."
As of the end of 2018, 200 devices had
been installed in beehives, monitoring
the health of nearly 10 million honeybees
split among locations in the United States,
Ireland, the United Kingdom, and South
Africa. With this split, ApisProtect is collect-
ing data from different climates, beekeeping

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IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - June 2019

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