The Emerging Tech Startups We’re Having Our Gen Z Team Members Stalk: Part 3

Bees?

There’s a lot to disagree on lately, but ONE thing, just one, that everyone seems to agree on, is #savethebees. I don’t know if that’s why this IoT, pollination-as-a-service, hive-tracking and protecting startup just got $4 million in their seed round, but I’m here for it.

Between mite infestation, colony collapse, monoculture farms, habitat fragmentation, increased use of neonicotinoid pesticides, and climate change, honeybee populations have been declining at unprecedented, alarming, and unsustainable rates over the last decade.

Why Do We Care?

— Crops pollinated by bees make up 35% of global food production.

— Bees are foundational to several species of flora AND fauna amid most habitats. Without the pollinators, environments collapse.

— Pollinators provide $24 billion to the U.S. agriculture industry — that’s ⅓ of the food you and I eat.

— Also, it would be cool to not endanger and kill off more species, yeah?

(More on this fact sheet here.)

BeeHero, The Startup Creating Honeybee IoT

Beekeeping is time- and labor- intensive. Beekeepers must care for new hives and colonies by checking in regularly and assisting when necessary, all the while being counted upon by growers to provide this living tool that’s so crucial to their (and our) livelihood. Go two weeks without checking in on the hive, and the colony could have collapsed or migrated (swarmed), effectively dooming the agriculture in need of pollination.

For those of us not on the frontlines of agriculture, this all sounds unrelatable and maybe even outdated — few of us are conscious of what actions actually go into being able to pop into a store and buy produce. But the struggle has been growing for pollinators and thus U.S. agriculture, and it seems as though BeeHero is arriving just in time.

Not Sponsored, We’re Just Stalking Them

BeeHero essentially treats bee hives like IoT devices, tracking health and growth progress, and injecting the tech you and I love to predict and protect agricultural tasks. Much like one of our clients, whose edge computing technology could predict machine maintenance, protect crews, and increase safety and efficiency for off-the-grid hardware (think mining crews), BeeHero can alert you to mite infestations, if the queen is in danger, quality of pollination, and a lot more. As it turns out, raw data doesn’t get us the expensive raw honey we like, we need the in-depth, quality data too. And though BeeHero didn’t come up with the processes for analyzing hives, they did turn it into what beekeepers actually needed in order to up efficiency and revenue.

If that’s not the weirdest, most unexpected emerging tech you’ve heard for 2020 so far, tell us where you get your news. Because BeeHero’s “real time crop consulting with smart hives” is some of the most baller branding we’ve seen not from us and it has me looking into if I can have a hive in my backyard.

Here’s to this startup hopefully building the right content syndication, geographic segmentation, and marketing strategy. We see too many businesses fail because they didn’t invest in proper brand builds and brand purpose from the get-go, therefore failing to grow and future-proof the business that they put so much sweat equity into. We hope you make it! #SaveTheBees #SaveTheStartups