The 11th IR52 Jang Young-sil Award of 2026 was awarded to “ConnectBee,” developed by FarmConnect. This device is installed in beehives used in smart farms to analyze the bees’ pollination activities in real time.

In agriculture, bee pollination is the most critical process for flowers to develop into fruit. No matter how meticulously greenhouse environments are managed in smart farms, if bees fail to perform their role, the fruit becomes smaller and yields decrease. Until now, farmers had no way of knowing how hard the bees were working and had to rely solely on their “gut feeling.”

ConnectBee utilizes artificial intelligence(AI) to automatically analyze the number of times bees enter and exit, the amount of pollen they bring back, and even distinguish between worker bees and drones. Kim Su-jin, a director at FarmConnect, explained, “Until now, inadequate pollination by bees has led to yield losses, but there was no technology worldwide capable of monitoring this in real time.” She added, “We have developed the world’s first equipment that converts all bee pollination activities into data, enabling farmers to immediately identify and address problems.”

The development process was not smooth from the start. Bees are small and fast, and since they fly in overlapping swarms, it was difficult to accurately track their movements using existing video technology. To solve this, the research team came up with an ingenious idea. Kim Mu-hyun, Director of the FarmConnect Technology Research Institute, recalled, “We designed a ‘speed bump-style gate’ at the entrance of the hive, similar to speed bumps on roads, to slow down the bees.” He added, “By guiding the bees to pass through one at a time at a consistent speed, we significantly improved the quality of video recognition.”

As a result, the system achieved an accuracy rate of over 95% in measuring bee traffic and pollen volume. Additionally, the system employs ultra-lightweight technology that enables real-time analysis directly on-site without the need for high-performance large-scale computers (GPU servers), thereby enhancing convenience for farmers.

Since its development was completed in 2023, ConnectBee has been deployed to 310 farms to date. FarmConnect plans to introduce “AI autonomous pollination management technology” in the future, which will combine data on flower bloom volume with bee activity to control hive entrances.