Meet the Yorkshire scientist protecting bee populations to save farming food crops

“It’s fascinating hearing about the excellent work these pollinating insects do. It’s more than just protecting food security. There are added benefits to our ecosystems, such as encouraging natural biodiversity, the removal of carbon from the atmosphere from increased plant growth and maximising nutritional quality.”

It was this infectious interest in insect characteristics that led Casey to launch his business, Agrisound, in early 2020.

And now, just two years later, despite challenges faced by the Covid-19 pandemic, the company is flying high and counts Innocent Drinks, Marks & Spencer, Tesco and the Grosvenor Group among its customer base.

Casey says: “I was working with farmers and technology companies to see where there were problems in agriculture and identify where technology could be applied to bridge this gap.

“I got excited about some of the new technology that was coming out, for example how people used cameras to monitor animals. Rather than me helping other people, I thought why don’t I set up a company and do this myself, so that’s where the idea came from.

“We found some technology being used in other areas and brought it over into honeybees. We developed algorithms and some smart computer analysis which could capture the sounds the bees were making and use them to make useful decisions.

“When the bees were making particular noises did this mean they were stressed or under attack or whatever it may be? During the first 12 months we really focused on how to get the technology out to beekeepers.”

The first major milestone for the pioneering new company came in early 2021 when it secured a £70,000 Government grant to transfer the technology from pollinators within a beehive to pollinators in the field.

Using the grant funding, Agrisound researched and developed a series of innovative agri-tech devices, which use a combination of acoustic technology and environmental sensors to monitor bee and other pollinator populations, remotely, through an app.

The pollinator-counting devices, called Polly, enable farmers and landowners to access new information about the local pollinating insects to help protect populations and boost local biodiversity.

The devices count the number of insects that visit a site and can identify which areas have higher and lower pollinator activity, both live and historically over a fixed period.

Casey has been astonished by the demand for the company’s pioneering technology.

He explains: “Polly has quickly become our flagship product and we’ve had a lot of interest from all sorts of people including farmers, landowners, the Government and corporate businesses. They all want to capture this information about how many pollinators they have in a particular area and monitor the changes they’re making in the area to see how that affects pollinator levels.

“This is really good to promote sustainability but also to tell consumers all the good things companies are doing behind the scenes. Quite simply, we’re using technology to make the invisible visible.”

He continues: “What we’re trying to do is say look, we can’t put wild flowers everywhere, or build lots of bug houses, because it’s simply not cost effective. But we can give a clear indication as to what actions would be best and most appropriate. So our tag line is simply ‘Getting the bees in the right place at the right time to give the best result.’

“It’s the same with glasshouses. These are the size of two or three football pitches, they’re enormous. Farmers put some bee houses about, but they don’t know if these are actually in the right spot. Are the bees lazy, do they want to stay in one place, or do they want to go out to the edges? All these considerations have a strong impact on the crop yield.

“We know that farmers in the UK are losing about £5,000 per hectare and that’s what we’re looking to tackle with this modern technology. Different crops have different economics but you can double your yield by getting pollination right.”

Agrisound got a major boost to its profile earlier this year when it secured an opportunity to showcase its technology on BBC’s The One Show.

Casey s s: “Dragon’s Den star Deborah Meaden was part of the feature as well so she was talking to me about where we are with the business, where we’re having problems and where she thought we should change things. To have someone of that calibre giving us free advice was extremely useful.

“We had an overwhelming interest in our products after the show, with somewhere in the region of 1,000 emails within 24 hours of the show airing.”

Agrisound’s most high-profile customers now include Marks & Spencer, Tesco, and Innocent Drinks. The company has secured partnerships with all these respected household names to promote sustainability and biodiversity throughout the supply chain.

What does the future hold for Agrisound?

Casey says: “We’re in the process of moving all manufacturing back to the UK from China. We’re going to open a new manufacturing site and are collaborating with a partner in the North-West to deliver that by December.

“It goes to show that because many UK manufacturing companies have invested heavily in automation, the cost price isn’t hugely different if you manufacture 50 or 5,000 miles away.

"We currently have only eight staff but plan to double that by the end of next year.”