BEEcosystem LLC was cofounded by Mike Zaengle and Dustin Betz, and officially incorporated in January of 2017. Mike and Dustin have worked together over the past 5+ years on a wide variety of interior agro/eco design-build projects, from aquaponic miniature container farms and rotating living wall vertical farms, to hydroponic furnishing pieces for a variety of residential and commercial clients. 

Even if you can't pledge your financial support to backing our campaign here on Indiegogo, you can still help us spread the word! "Like" or "Follow" us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and give us a shout-out! Also, please share this video and this campaign page on social media and with your friends! 

And if you're an experienced beekeeper, regardless of whether you can support us financially by backing this campaign or purchasing a hive, we would love to tell you more about our new Beekeeper Ambassador Program. Click here to visit our website and learn more, and fill out the form at the bottom of the page for us to get in touch with you. We will also be exhibiting at this year's American Beekeeping Federation Conference & Trade Show in Reno, Nevada between January 10th-13th, 2018 - so if you're attending the conference, stop by our booth in the Trade Show!

Risks & Challenges

Because we have already been manufacturing and fulfilling BEEcosystem hive orders for the past year, fulfilling backers' campaign pledges will not be a challenge for our team, regardless of whether or not we meet our flex funding goal. We have our manufacturing supply chain in place, and the manufacturing run will absolutely happen—so backers can rest assured that they will receive their orders/perks. Our goal in launching this campaign is simply to consolidate some preorders ahead of the 2018 season, which will help make our first manufacturing run of the 2018 year even more successful, as well as to help generate some buzz in coordination with our exhibition at this year's big American Beekeeping Federation Conference and Trade Show in Reno, the largest beekeeping conference in the USA.

A consistent challenge we face today, as we have also faced in the past, is in helping to guide novice beekeepers who back our campaign—BEEcosystem attracts all kinds of people, and we designed it to be beautiful and interesting so that it does just that—so if you're a first-time beekeeper, we welcome you to the BEEcosystem community! However, we consider it our responsibility to offer some guidance to new beekeepers, and also to correct those who might hold the misperception that beekeeping is an effortless hobby that magically produces honey. Unfortunately, this is simply not the case. In fact, many beekeepers will conservatively recommend waiting until after hive's second fall/autumn season in order to harvest honey for the first time, and even then only harvesting the surplus honey that bees have stored up, so that they do not starve themselves overwintering, which can happen if too much honey is harvested. Beekeeping is certainly not difficult to learn, but it does require a desire to want to learn it! Luckily, beekeepers tend to be the most curious educators, who love to help one another learn continuously—and the level support out there for beginner beekeepers is truly enormous. We are thrilled be a part of that support system for first time beekeepers, and we do provide some resources, as well as openly welcome questions from those getting started for the first time.

Going hand-in-hand with beginner beekeeping, another unique challenge comes in the form of making sure our backers know their local beekeeping laws and ordinances. While the tides of stigma are changing, some municipalities still ban beekeeping outright. It is important to check with your state and local laws and ordinances, as some states also require beekeepers to register their hive(s). Both throughout and following the campaign, our team will make ourselves available to work closely with our backers and make sure everyone understands their local laws and regulations, as well as how to meet them.

A third challenge may come from backers who pledge a reward level to receive only a single BEEcosystem "HexHive," and whose honeybee colony then successfully outgrows the space of that single HexHive. The reason BEEcosystem is modular is to be able to expand the available hive-interior space; however, this assumes backers will either pledge reward levels upfront that receive multiple HexHives, or purchase additional HexHives later on as needed. A larger honeybee colony tends to be a stronger honeybee colony, so permanently restricting bees to a single HexHive is not the ideal longterm condition to foster hive stability, as a colony that runs out of room is far likelier to swarm. Swarming is not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, because it is essentially a reproductive phenomenon—but if the colony either splits or leaves completely in a swarm event, the beekeeper may be disappointed. BEEcosystem is designed to expand into a large observation hive, not remain confined to a single 6-frame HexHive for consecutive years of use. We will work with our backers, especially new beekeepers, to help them understand swarming behaviors and how to manage them effectively.

One final challenge is that some backers (again, especially first time beekeepers) may believe that a failed colony signifies that they are a failure as a beekeeper—this is simply incorrect, but offers a teachable moment about what it really means to practice beekeeping. Remember the often cited Colony Collapse Disorder statistic: that on average ~1/3 of ALL hives are lost EACH YEAR due to Colony Collapse. That means even professional beekeepers, who keep bees commercially to earn their living, still experience failing colonies every single year. Unfortunately, this is the harsh reality of nature and a true fact of beekeeping—but it is also a driving motivation for the creation of BEEcosystem: because by together encouraging new hobbyist beekeepers to host more hives, we all help make small contributions to our localized honeybee genetic diversities. Some researchers believe the best hope for honeybees' future will lie in their ability to naturally adapt and evolve resistances to the various localized stressors that contribute to Colony Collapse. Therefore, by keeping bees in your local community, you ARE helping to naturally foster that random genetic diversity—so remember, if your colony does fail, that does not make you a failure as a beekeeper. On the contrary, it proves you ARE a beekeeper for having tried, and you will always have the ability to continue beekeeping, by starting up a new colony the next season, and helping add that pollinator genetic diversity to your local area.