Young trio cause a buzz with bee app

Nay-Chur team mates Connor Boyle, Gabrielle Young and Ashlyn Baum hug the kowhai trees they were awarded for their concept Treehuggers. Photo / Supplied

Is your place ripe for a bit of buzz?

Three young Kiwis have designed a web app that can tell landowners whether their property is suited for bees.

Their concept, cleverly named Airbnbee, made a splash at the Nature Hack event hosted by Landcare Research and Callaghan Innovation in Wellington.

The contest challenged innovators to come up with a design within just 24 hours - and Josh Taylor, Tim McNamara and Fredrik Bergstrom set out with an aim to create an app that solved a problem rather than just conveyed information in an interesting way.

"We wanted to make something that makes someone's life a bit easier," Mr Taylor said.

Armed only with Landcare Research data and their own nous, the trio were able to produce an app that allowed landowners to find out how suitable their property is for bee hives, simply by selecting their location on a map of New Zealand.

The site's suitability is then given a rating out of five stars.

"It helps them know how much their land is worth if someone is interested in paying to put their bee hives there," Mr Taylor said.

Taylor's group were one of three to take out an award for their prototype, which can be viewed here.
Gabrielle Young and her team mates Ashlyn Baum and Connor Boyle also took out another award for the most novel use of the Landcare Research data for their concept TreeHugger.

Ms Young said the app, which is in the prototype stage, turns identifying trees into a game by the user taking a selfie of themselves hugging a tree or if it's too far blowing it a kiss.

"We created TreeHugger to encourage people to stop and take a closer look at the unique beauty of New Zealand's native trees and appreciate them - literally," she said.

"We really wanted to make something interactive."

Users earn "achievement badges" each time they upload a picture of themselves "appreciating a tree", with the aim of the game being to collect all the badge.

"It's kind of like a scavenger hunt."

Jon Lemmon, Peter Jacobson and Iain Kirkpatrick meanwhile took out another award for their web app, Fungus Time, showing how different fungi and plant diseases change over time in various places around New Zealand.

"You could eventually overlay different datasets to see what comes into play," Mr Lemmon said.

The winners were decided by a panel of judges, including Environment Minister Dr Nick Smith.