New startup uses IoT to save the bees and green technology news

New AgTech startup The Bee Corp raised a Series A round. The Bee Corp provides a software solution for professional beekeepers (and is the first B2B beekeeping software on G2 Crowd!) to the ongoing colony collapse disorder phenomenon with a platform called Queen’s Guard.

The company’s history started when Indiana University student (and now CEO) Ellie Symes applied for and won a grant to run student beehives at the university. Symes and her two co-founders, whom she met while pitching her project on campus, then started the Beekeeping Club at IU. From there Indiana University took notice, when The Bee Corp entered and won the school’s Building Entrepreneurs in Science & Technology (BEST) $100,000 competition.

We talked to CEO Ellie Symes about her company’s recent round of funding —

Q: How did the round come about?

A: After we won the IU BEST Competition in 2016, we planned our budget to determine when we would need capital to get to cash flow break even. We sought out this funding round from our investors.

Q: What are you investing in with the funding and how important is it the The Bee Corp’s mission?

A: With this funding, we are investing in improvements to our current product, Queen’s Guard, which tracks the health of the queen bee for beekeepers. In addition, we are investing in R&D to determine additional patterns that can be used to help beekeepers track other aspects of hive health.

Q: Can you talk just a little bit in a broad sense of how you’re leveraging IoT to help monitor beehives?

A: With the decreasing cost of hardware due to the increasing applications of IoT, the company is able to leverage commodity sensors to track aspects of hive health. These environmental sensors (ex temperature), give indicators of changes in the hive, which our team correlates with changes in health factors.

Learn more about how beehive colony collapse disorder and how the Queen’s Guard is protecting colonies by checking out the Queen’s Guard’s G2 Crowd profile or by visiting their website.

Electric car tipping point: Green technology news

Electric cars have been making slow advancements for what seems like forever, with the “we’re just around the bend from something big” vibe. This week sped up the race to wean the car industry off of fossil fuels in what feels like a tipping point for the electric car industry. Here are all the electric car announcements and news from the past week:

Every Jaguar/Land Rover Vehicle From 2020 Will Be Electric (TechCrunch)
Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Bets on Electric Cars (ABC News)
Lincoln Plans to Electrify Entire Lineup by 2022 (TechCrunch)
China Looks at Ending Sales of Gasoline Cars (Detroit News)
VW Announces Massive Investment in Electric Cars (Electrek)
Mercedes-Benz Will Electrify Its Lineup by 2020 (TechCrunch)
Jaguar Bets On Electric SUV Making a Good Race Car (Digital Trends)
Audi, Mercedes, & BMW Releases Electric Cars to Rival Tesla (Business Insider)

Green tool

Queen’s Guard | Featured in our top story, “ Queen’s Guard analyzes data collected from a temperature sensor placed inside your hive. The sensor communicates with a solar-powered modem (placed in your bee yard), which sends your hive data to our secure database. When the Queen’s Guard algorithm detects a pattern that indicates queen loss, the system instantly delivers an alert to your phone or email.”

Quick Hits

There Are Over 341,000 Wind Turbines Making a Difference (CNBC)
Senate Defies Trump’s Anti-Climate Plan (Reuters)
The Number That Shows Climate Change Is Making Hurricanes Worse (Time)
If You Accepted Federal Aid for a Storm, Accept Climate Change (Deadstate)
Nuclear Plans Should Be Rethought After Fall in Offshore… (The Guardian)
Pope Launches Attack on Trump Over Climate Denying (The Independent)
Trump Team Gutting EPA When We Need It Most (TheHill)
President Trump’s War on Science (The New York Times)
Conspiracies, Corruption and Climate (The New York Times)
Irma Won’t “Wake Up” Climate Change Denying Republicans (The Intercept)
Global Ocean Circulation Appears to Be Collapsing Due to a… (Forbes)
Tesla’s New Solar Roof Is Actually Cheaper Than a Normal Roof (Inhabitat)
NASA Considers Puncturing Yellowstone Supervolcano to… (Inhabitat)
Building Hurricane-Proof Cities (The Atlantic)
GM, Disney, Shell and 1,200 Other Companies Take… (Washington Post)
Big Gates on the Biggest Bets in Energy Investing (Quartz)
We May Soon Charge Devices by Electricity in Bloodstream (Futurism)
Miami Mayor: “If This Isn’t Climate Change, I Don’t…” (Miami Herald)
Pentagon Ignores Trump’s ‘Climate Change as a Hoax…’ (Business Insider)
Tesla’s SolarCity is Coming (Business Insider)
NY’s Plan to Lower Buildings Emitting Greenhouse… (Washington Post)