Category: ApiTrace

ApiTrace is an innovative traceability system providing beekeepers in sub-Saharan Africa with a fair income for their honey, by providing access to wholesale markets to rural communities and making honey traceable from hive to supermarket shelf. This is achieved through the innovative use of IT, whereby every hive is registered to the ApiTrace system and given a unique QR code after being successfully inspected by an ApiTrace bee inspector. Once verified, the beekeeper is then eligible to sell their honey into the wholesale market at their local Honey Processing Hub (HPH), where they will be paid instantly through a digital payment gateway, verified by biometric ID to prevent fraud and intimidation to ensure that only the beekeeper gets paid for their honey.

Honey is brought by the beekeeper to the HPH in barrels embedded with Radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags that are scanned along every step of the supply chain. ApiTrace adds value by providing wholesalers with bulk supplies of African honey, of consistent quality and quantity that has been tested for common contaminants, so that all honey processed through the HPH is export ready.

ApiTrace is addressing 14 of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), these SDGs include No Poverty (#1) Gender Equality (#4), Decent Work & Economic Growth (#8), and Life on Land (#15), among others. Because only a small amount of land is needed to keep bees, ApiTrace will create opportunities that are accessible to all, providing equal opportunities to all groups, in particular women and young people in groups that may otherwise be marginalised. To ensure that these opportunities are accessible to all, the ApiTrace app is currently available in English, Swahili, and French, and is readily translatable into any language.

The environmental and ecological benefits of honey bees are well documented and publicised and by carrying out their beekeeping activities, beekeepers will also be generating invaluable big data on their local flora, climate and weather patterns, and pesticide usage in their local area, which can be used by governments, academic institutions, and other agencies to inform future policy and climate mitigation strategies.

On 16th February 2022, the ApiTrace partnership between Bee.Watch Ltd and Africa Apiculture Consortium was formalised after three years of collaboration between the organisations.

The Africa Apiculture Consortium and its parent organisation, The Source Plus have extensive experience in delivering Agri-Tech innovations across Africa. The Source Plus is a member of the UN Global Compact and the Africa Apiculture Consortium have 11 member countries.

Bee.Watch Ltd is a sister company to uWatch. The directors are experienced in niche IT applications and developed the apiary management system ApiTrace.

Bee.Watch Ltd also patented an innovation-award winning hive entrance called the Upstairs Downstairs Hive Intrance, now distributed in Africa as part of the African Langstroth Hive.

The overall objective of the ApiTrace Partnership is to make Africa the worlds 4th largest honey exporter behind China, India and Argentina but the worlds #1 exporter of contaminant free honey. This is achievable because this continent-wide rural and domestically based industry already exists, it just lacks a cohesive traceable route to market. By localising the apiary management system Bee.Watch, ApiTrace will bring the market for traceable and exportable honey to rural communities, making high-quality, the bitcoin tumbler contaminant-free honey a cash crop with the aims to alleviate poverty and gender inequality across the sub-Saharan region while addressing 14 of the UNs Sustainable Development Goals.