The ToBe company completed its first recruitment round and a successful pilot experiment, which showed effective destruction of a threatening parasite, an increase in honey yield and a dramatic reduction in beehive mortality. The company will soon embark on a second recruitment round and a pilot abroad. The Israeli company is the first in the world to develop a technological platform that solves the most serious global problem in the world of bees: colony collapse disorder.
The collapse of entire hives all over the world endangers food security, since the bees not only produce honey, they are responsible for pollinating about a third of the vegetable and fruit crops. The main cause of the collapse is the varroa mite, a parasite that clings to bees and feeds on their body fat, weakening them and infecting them with viruses.
Beyond the damage to beekeepers, consumers also feel the impact of the parasite. For example, the price of a hive for pollinating avocados in Israel tripled last year, and the price of a hive for pollinating almonds in the US increased to $240 per hive. The existing solutions used by beekeepers are passive and outdated, and they fail to cope with the rate of reproduction of the parasite.
ToBe offers a comprehensive electro-mechanical technological solution, which both treats the parasite effectively (a 98% reduction in infestation within two weeks and maintains a healthy and strong hive), and also enables ongoing monitoring of the hive and providing data on its health and strength in real time. There is no need to expand on the cost of living in the food sector in Israel, which has only risen as a result of the lack of competitiveness, the post-corona effect and the war in Ukraine. If the threat of bee extinction is not addressed, the worst is still ahead.
The product is sold in Israel to most large beekeepers. The pilot experiment proved unequivocally that the system is an effective solution to the varroa problem: effective destruction of the parasite, an increase of about 30% in the honey yield, a reduction of about 50% in the mortality of the beehives and an improvement of about 30% in the strength of the hives. Weighing the results shows an improvement of between 120 and 200 dollars per hive per year, depending on the costs of cultivation and the price of honey in the country of cultivation.
Eric Yoali, CEO of ToBe: “We are dealing with a worldwide ecological problem. Albert Einstein said that ‘four years after the bees disappear, the human race will be extinct’, and we at ToBe are working determinedly to solve the problem of the disappearance of the bees. I am happy and proud to lead the solution to the problem, which puts the food security of all of us at risk, also to other countries in the world.”