By Lynda Kiernan
Interdomus Capital has led a C$1.1 million (US$830,000)Seed Round for Nectar, a Montreal-based agtech startup, to advance its IoT commercial beehive management platform. Other participants in the round included Real Ventures, Upper Canada Equity Fund, First Stone Venture Partners, Third Estate Investments, and various angel investors.
Founded in 2016 by Roberge, Xavier de Briey, and Evan Henry, and an alum of the Canadian accelerator program Founder Fuel, Nectar uses in-hive sensors called ‘Beecons’ that gather a range of data including temperature, humidity, movement, and track audio. This information is directed to the startup’s BeeHub station which serves as an on-site weather station, and transmits the data to the startup’s cloud-based portal, which can produce digital maps, detect if a queen bee is present in a hive, track hive populations and mortality rates, and can quantify hive security.
“Nectar is a unique and revolutionary solution in a virgin, niche market that impacts 30 percent of our food supply,” said Richard Adler, president, Interdomus Capital. “The story cannot be more compelling.”
Bee Aware
Bees pollinate approximately one third of the crops we eat, and approximately 75 percent of the specialty crops grown, contributing $174 billion in pollination value across the agri-food industry per year.
And although the USDA notes in a July 17 report that bee populations in North America have been in decline since the 1940s, it was a little more than 10 years ago when a crisis hit when thousands of hives were lost and a new disorder was termed: colony collapse disorder.
Mysteriously, worker bees would suddenly abandon a hive, leaving the queen, brood, or young bees, a few nurse bees, and full reserves of pollen and honey behind. However, a hive cannot function properly without its worker bees and would soon die.
During the 2006/2007 season, beekeepers began reporting losses of between 30 and 90 percent of their hives without apparent cause. Much scientific work has been done in an attempt to discover the root cause, but bees and their keepers are still struggling. In the 2015/16 winter season, U.S. commercial beekeepers lost 38 percent of their colonies – more than double the considered acceptable loss of 15 percent, according to a report published by the Journal of Apicultural Research.
Losses that season were slightly lower in other countries, but still concerning – Canada reported losses of 16.8 percent, Central European beekeepers reported losses of 11.9 percent, and New Zealand saw losses of 10.7 percent.
Compounding this issue is the fact that between 2008 and 2013, the diversity of wild bees in the U.S. also feel by 23 percent.
“The evidence is overwhelming that hundreds of the native bees we depend on for ecosystem stability, as well as pollination services worth billions of dollars, are spiraling toward extinction,” said Kelsey Kopec, a native pollinator researcher at the Center for Biological Diversity, and the author of Pollinators in Peril: A systematic status review of North American and Hawaiian native bees released in March of last year. “It’s a quiet but staggering crisis unfolding right under our noses…”
Bee Resourceful
Faced with such a mysterious and critical challenge, agtech startups have begun stepping up to provide possible answers and paths to recovery. From bee suppliers to farmers, to consumers, this phenomenon is financially affecting the entire supply chain, and agtech startups are working diligently to develop technologies that can mitigate the problem before our food supply is also negatively affected.
Another such startup is Ireland-based ApisProtect, which raised $1.8 million in November 2018 through a Seed round led by Finistere Ventures and the Atlantic Bridge University Fund. Much like Nectar in Canada, ApisProtect uses the Internet of Things (IoT) to monitor honeybee colonies via real-time hive monitoring powered by satellite-enabled sensors that are retrofitted to existing beehives. The company then applies proprietary big data and machine learning techniques to convert the raw data collected into valuable information and actionable insights for beekeepers.
On this side of the Atlantic, Nectar plans to use the funds recently secured to grow its presence across North America, and to expand its work with top commercial beekeepers and growers.
“We now have the support and resources needed to drive change in the agricultural industry and build a sustainable food system where biodiversity is considered an essential factor to feeding our planet,” said Marc-André Roberge, co-founder and CEO of Nectar.
– Lynda Kiernan is Editor with GAI Media and daily contributor to GAI News. If you would like to submit a contribution for consideration, please contact Ms. Kiernan at lkiernan@globalaginvesting.com
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