How Air Pollution Levels In Merseyside Effect Our Bees

In 2020, we installed live streaming and data collection kit into one of our partner organisations’s (B 4 Biodiversity) beehives at The Tapestry in The Fabric district.

The specialist beehive streaming kit contains:

• An infrared camera to live stream clear images day and night

• Microphone in which hundreds of sounds are captured from the bees buzzing to seagulls squawking and fork lift trucks manoeuvring around the streets!

• Humidity sensors

• Light sensors

• Pressure sensors

On of the ket sensors which we were keen on learning about is the pollutant sensor. This measures pollutant levels inside the hive which are compared to levels outside the hive. We think this is really important, especially in Liverpool as our city is regarded as one of the worst in the UK coming joint 4th of the most air polluted places according to BBC reports.

We will be building upon they new initiative to capture more information about our environment through the bees. We have a lot to learn but we can hope the bees will teach us via tech!

Click here to the live stream cameras

We are currently working up a report to evidence the effect that the high pollution levels have on our bees and ways in which this can be combatted. We look forward to sharing the report with you in the near future.

Written by Andrea Ku