WATERLOO REGION — Erica Shelley wants to save the world by first saving the bees.
The founder and chief executive officer of the startup Best for Bees Ltd. has a PhD in molecular medical genetics. For years, she was researching colorectal cancers and DNA — an ambitious young scientist bent on finding a cure for cancer.
But it was her hobby as a beekeeper that sent Shelley on a completely different path that could have a much larger impact on the future of humanity.
Honeybees are among the most efficient pollinators. Pollination must occur for plants to produce fruit and seedlings.
Trees are pollinated by honeybees, and trees take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to produce oxygen.
“Bees make the planet livable for humans,” said Shelley. “It’s crazy — people don’t understand how important bees are.’
She quickly learned that up to 80 per cent of beehives in North America are destroyed every year by parasitic Varroa mites. So, the former cancer researcher invented small cones that attach to the outside of a hive box.
The bees are forced to use certain cones to enter a hive, and a different set of cones to exit. When passing through the entrance cones, the bees pick up the medication placed there by their keeper, and take it inside the hive, eliminating mites from the hives.
In an unexpected bonus, the cones also protect the honeybee hives from hornets, wasps, skunks, field mice and other predators.
Shelley started a consulting business to help beekeepers.
By March 2021, she founded Best for Bees Ltd., and joined the Waterloo Accelerator Centre. In April, the startup sent out customized plans to each client that explains the threats honeybees face in their specific location, and how to protect their hives.
Bee Protect clients use the startup’s reporting program to record 40 points of data from each hive — nearby crops, pesticides, rain, snow cover, temperatures, frost and parasites, among other information.
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That data is used for the monthly bee health plans. Threats and conditions vary greatly from one area to another.
“Down in Niagara Region, they deal with something called small hive beetle, and here in Kitchener we have not seen that yet,” said Shelley.
There are an estimated 250,000 honeybee hives in North America and 101 million worldwide.
Best for Bees Ltd. has signed up 900 clients so far in North America, who pay a monthly fee to receive the monthly health plans. The startup plans to build a $300,000 software platform that can collect the data from clients around the world.
“Within two years, we plan on moving into Europe, which has a bigger market, and spreading worldwide is our long-term plan,” said Shelley.
Honeybees are an indicator species — tiny canaries in a coal mine, said Shelley. Climate change is wreaking havoc on ecosystems big and small, and data from honeybee hives can help beekeepers better prepare for the changes.
“We are seeing disease and pests that we have never seen before,” said Shelley. “If we don’t figure out a way to start dealing with these issues now, there is a potential in the future that our food security won’t be there.”
Shelley wants to use honeybees as bio-sensors.
“We can use bees to predict how long a winter will last, we can predict what crops will work well in certain areas, so there is a lot of information that can be gained from the bees about the health of the world,” said Shelley.
“How all of this is interconnected is important.”
In February, Bee Protect Ltd. had a booth at the annual beekeeping conference in Tennessee — the biggest gathering of its kind in North America.
Some master beekeepers told her the data she was collecting could have huge impacts on the world’s bee population.
“With that platform we can potentially make huge gains in terms of the environment, food security and even predict the best places to plant crops,” said Shelley.
“The implications are huge in terms of where we started and where we are now.”
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2023-05-11 10:02:30Z
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