Accolade Stories #7 - Beekeeper
This is Petr Mach, our beekeeper. He looks after the bees at six of our industrial parks across the Czech Republic. Each location has eight hives, except for Brno, which boasts sixteen. One hive is home to between 10,000 and 20,000 bees in winter and up to 70,000 bees in full season, which is more than half a million bees per park.
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Monitoring systems and innovation
In order to be able to give all these bees the same amount of care, Petr has developed his own monitoring system which tracks various hive parameters. With the help of artificial intelligence, he can check that the bees are doing OK and be alerted to anything unusual. The system uses temperature sensors and acoustic sensors to measure frequencies and determine whether the bees are swarming or if they have lost their queen. All the hives are fitted with a monitoring system and some even feature online cameras, which allow Petr to keep an eye on the hives around the clock. At our Cheb park, the entire system is powered by a separate solar unit.
Industrial park honey!
As our bees are thriving, we can enjoy up to 30 kg of honey per hive. The bees in Cheb are apparently producing more than average! We like to give honey to local communities during the festive period, because what would traditional Christmas gingerbread be without a good dose of honey?
And speaking of bees — we couldn't help but ask Petr how resistant he is to bee stings. He reported back that no amount of equipment can fully protect him and that they hurt him as much as the next person. But it’s just a small price to pay for a job he enjoys so much.