York-based biodiversity tech start-up AgriSound has won £300,000 of European funding to supercharge a ground-breaking research and development project set to revolutionise commercial crop pollination and aid future sustainability of food production.

In its first international partnership, the cash from Eurostars, part of the European Partnership on Innovative SMEs, will see AgriSound working with Swiss sustainable pollination specialists Wildbiene + Partner AG (“Wildbiene”), to harness mason bees as an alternative to honeybees within orchards.

AgriSound and Wildbiene will each use their funding to develop commercially deployable mason bee habitats incorporating highly sophisticated bio acoustic listening devices.

With origins in AgriSound’s successful POLLYTM, pollinator listening device, the new technology will focus exclusively on the mason bee population, instead of the long-established pollinator choices of bumble bees or honey bees.

A single mason bee performs a similar level of pollination as 200 honeybees and due to their solitary lifestyles, they are less susceptible to common diseases which affect beehive colonies.

Until now, Mason bees have been under-used as commercial pollinators due to a lack of professional management practices suited to these high-maintenance bees. While honeybees are effective pollinators, this is due to very high numbers of bees existing within a hive and these bees can compete for local food sources from native bees and are increasingly viewed as unsustainable in some parts of the world.

By conducting trials with Wildbiene, who work to manage mason bees and provide respective habitats, AgriSound is on the verge of a completely new way of caring for mason bees as the future of pollination.

With pollinators like bees being crucial to three out of four crops producing fruit or seeds for human use around the world, the funding is a huge success for environmental research and agricultural production.

The new device developed through the companies’ partnership will allow food producers and farmers to use mason bees to increase crop yields. This is because they will be able to better understand, control and sustain these prolific pollinators as the device will not only detect where the mason bees are by listening out for their distinctive sounds, but also ascertain their health and wellbeing.

Casey Woodward, founder and CEO of AgriSound said: “We’re thrilled to have secured such supportive European funding towards our exciting new technological project to use mason bees as incredibly powerful agricultural pollinators.

“Enabling use of this type of bee in commercial spaces could be a game-changer for crop yielding worldwide, and by securing our first international partnership with Wildbiene we expect to begin trialling the new device in 2024-2025. Wildbiene’s enthusiasm about the mason bees inspires us to understand and care for them together.”