In our continuing series on Wisconsin Leaders & Influencers, we chat with Brad James, President & CEO of Beepods, which promotes and implements sustainable beekeeping practices by providing education and resources to individuals, businesses, and organizations.
Beepods was founded in 2009 and has gone through a huge amount of change since then. I was brought on a few years ago; the company had a great concept and great products, but it wasn’t moving forward. At the time, I was working for a company that specialized in taking startups to the next level and Beepods was one of our clients. My goal since joining the company has been to build it the right way, not just in terms of making money, but to make a social and environmental impact from top to bottom. We source as many of our products and materials as possible from U.S. manufacturers (specifically, those from Wisconsin), and work with locally minded and eco-minded companies. We have employed local artisans and individuals with visual impairments. This is part of our strategy to build economic equity across all layers of the company and to promote sustainability in more than just the “green” sense of the word.
As a company, we’re cash positive, which is always fun. We’ve solidified some distributors in different niches, which is big. We have new inspection processes and have rounded out and added to our product offering. When I came on, Beepods was more or less a concept. Now it’s a feasible product with services and tools people are using.
Lately we’re going through an entire update of our software and back end systems. We’ll have a new look to our website soon, and we’re launching more digital products so people can dip their toes into beekeeping, in a way that’s easy and affordable to access. And we’re ramping up to open a round of fundraising, so lots going on.
When most people think about beekeeping, they think of white boxes. That is one way of beekeeping, but it’s not the only way. We try to focus on that with our messaging. The usual way of beekeeping isn’t bad, but there are certainly other ways to do it, so Beepods is about educating and awareness as much as it is about selling products.
Anywhere you can think of that you might be able to put a beehive, we’ve probably done it. With schools, we’re particularly interested in educating the next generation. We can provide beekeeping curriculum for teachers ranging in subjects from math and science to art and engineering. We work with FabLabs and MakerSpaces on tech and computing and in outdoor classrooms to enable and empower teachers to use those spaces as a type of living lab. (Science experiments don’t always need to happen at a desk.) We have tools for kids at every level, and we support educators with tools, techniques, and bee viewers. We really want to make it possible for all people—even those who may be afraid—to interact with bees.
Wisconsin is one of the top 10 honey-producing states, yet we sustain the highest colony collapses and die-offs. It’s a complicated problem—no one thing is causing these collapses and die-offs. Part of the problem is that due to the long tradition of “white box beekeeping,” there’s no central pool of data for us to use to measure the success of various beekeeping techniques. (As opposed to an agricultural industry like dairy farming, where we’ve been collecting data from dairy cows for decades.) We’ve only been collecting this type of data for honey bees in the last 10-15 years, so we’re relatively far behind in research for the most important domesticated animal. We’re working with beekeepers to collect and aggregate data around global geolocations so we can get a better picture of what’s happening. Beekeepers use the same training, techniques, and tools, but they’re not taking variables into consideration when collecting data.
Wisconsin was built on farming and manufacturing, and we try to capitalize on those industries, along with technology. Everything we need to run a meaningful company, we can do here in Wisconsin. People in Wisconsin understand agriculture, where food comes from, and the role of bees in that process. There are still manufacturers in Wisconsin; they have survived outsourcing. Understanding things like how batch manufacturing is important to smaller businesses has helped me see how important the local economy can be.
Other industries and ideals here are also important to our business, in their own way. Tech, slow food, slow money, general Wisconsin friendliness. We’re not a one-trick pony so ours is a difficult business to build. I think we can be the Nike of beekeeping in the U.S., but it’s going to take time.
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