Ellie Symes: The Bee Corp

Not only did Ellie Symes start her master’s degree program the same year that she was finishing her undergraduate degree at Indiana University, she also pioneered an ag start-up all about bees and agriculture’s pollination processes. Constantly moving throughout her childhood, Ellie has found a home in Indiana where she and her co-founder, Wyatt, continue to build research, relationships, and processes to solve the problem of accuracy in pollinator counts, specifically for almond orchardists. 

The official product of The Bee Corp, Verifly utilizes the research Ellie and her team have done on beekeeping, pollination and beehives through infrared cameras. Not the first product that they have created, it’s their current staple product, and utilizes infrared cameras at nights to create a snapshot of the hive's health.

The reason why sensors are helpful to understand beehives is because bees are their own heating and cooling system for their home. They control a lot of other factors in the hive in order to incubate their eggs. All of this can be monitored by sensors versus the usual method of manual inspection that requires the hives to be opened. 

Choosing to be in a Benefit Corporation in the very first meeting, held in an audience with the same professionals that had encouraged them to dream bigger, Wyatt and Ellie built their business model. One of the board members who was formerly a lawyer, encouraged them to look at the difference between private, non-profit and B Corp.

“[B Corp] sounded like the best marriage of our value as founders in doing well, while also fitting well in what we were trying to create with a business model,” says Ellie. Using the B Corp outline has helped The Bee Corp structure the company culture and their strong values around how their products won’t just benefit their business but the industry as a whole. 

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