This article was originally published on Cambridge Today and written by Matt Betts. Cambridge Today and its sister publications are a subsidiary of Village Media, which covers nearly three dozen municipalities in Canada.

Sometimes it's the simplest solutions that end up being the best ones.

It's the approach Cambridge's Konrad Borowski took when inventing the Beekon.

The Beekon is a buoyant platform for man-made beehives. With the device, hives can rise and lower along with water levels, preventing damage.

"The reason why that's important in the first place is floods, especially in the southern hemisphere, are ravaging agriculture," Borowski said.

"When pollination suffers, so does the agriculture adjacent to it. In a single night apiaries can be completely destroyed by a flash flood, a hurricane or rainfall. The traditional wooden beehive is just not resilient to water."

The device features no electrical technology and is easy to set up and use. As water comes in, the platform moves up a metal rod to keep the hive from being flooded.

The simplicity is by design, Borowski said, and the product has received a United States patent.

"When you work in agriculture, you realize very quickly you need something reliable and something simple," he added.

"Adding more complexity and over-engineering a system only adds more points of failure. When it comes to protecting existing agriculture, usually the simplest solutions, they're the best."

Borowski has travelled across the globe, consulting with governments to offer solutions. His business is currently working in Nepal with the Agricultural Development Centre.

It's a fitting product for a Cambridge native to create, given the city has been designated as a Bee City.

The whole idea came from his mother who was watching a documentary about a man in the Philippines who lost 200 beehives overnight.

"In the documentary, his beekeeping business and apiary wasn't just providing for him and his family, it was providing for the entire community around him," Borowski said.

"The agriculture of the entire region was crippled for over a year because no matter what was planted, it didn't have the pollination necessary to be fruitful."

It prompted him to do a deep dive on what solutions were currently available. What he found was most of them required manual labour, which only adds work for the beekeepers.

Given how important bees are to sustainable living, it became his mission to find a better way.

"They're the reason we have a surplus of food now," Borowski said of bees.

"Without them, 75 per cent of the food on our plates would be gone. We wouldn't be able to eat citrus fruits, we wouldn't have berries, most nuts. Without bees, we die."

His business is also in the process of creating other bee-related solutions, but the Beekon is the flagship product.

Borowski initially studied urban planning at the University of Waterloo before becoming interested in engineering.

Being able to create a business that also helps people around the world is a fulfilling feeling, he said.

"I can rest easy knowing my work is leaving more than it takes," Borowski added.

"When people thank me for doing something that makes money and provides them income, it's very surreal. I think there are ethical avenues to provide for each other in society. It really comes down to community."