It's bee-n a bee-sy year at Beekon.

But... let's go back a bit.

A few years ago, I remember seeing a man in the Philippines lose the entirety of his nearly 200 hive apiary to a single flash flood. Overnight. What was lost was more than just the livelihood of an entire family. An agricultural network was wiped out in a matter of hours. The bees, the honey, the hives, the pollination supporting the local ecosystem. Gone.

Things were already not looking so great for the bees then. Later, in 2023, nearly half of the managed beehives in the United States were lost, and in 2024, that number rose to 62 percent on average. Varroa mites, pesticide resistant pests, failed overwintering, and increasing environmental stressors as a result of climate change have only been compounding. 

One of those stressors is flooding.

Flooded hives at a private European apiary following a flash flood, damaged by moisture if not already fully submerged. Photo Credit: Stanisław Wirko.

The same year, 200,000 hives were lost in a matter of days due to Hurricanes Helene and Milton in the United States. Then, 60,000 were lost during the Rio Grande do Sul floods in Brazil. At conservative estimates of $500 per hive (colony included), these two events come out to a loss of $130M USD. That doesn't include the cost of losing pollination services to agriculture and surrounding ecologies, or even the significant quantities of honey that were lost in those hives.

Those are only two events out of dozens occurring globally every year. Annually, the frequency and intensity continue to rise. The floods across Texas and adjacent states are only the most recent tragedy, and the damage that has been done there is yet to be assessed. Across the globe, nuisance flooding is up 300 to 900 percent in the last 50 years alone. Without intervention, pollinator-dependent coastal flora and mangroves risk total collapse.

After a caffeinated deep dive into existing solutions, there was a realization: there were none. No reliable way to protect pollinators and pollination from flooding.

So we designed one. The world's first flood-resistant beehive. Made from recycled high-density polyethylene (HDPE), a major plastic found in ocean garbage, also used in naval buoys. Our hives are designed to rise safely with floodwaters, enabling pollination even in floodplains and marshlands.

Patent-pending and all.

Early concept hives floating in Great Lakes freshwater. Some may notice their cylindrical shape; these concepts were to prove buoyancy. Photo Credit: Beekon.

So we're building. Beelding. 

Since January of 2025, we:

• Launched small-scale test hives in Great Lakes Freshwater under tougher conditions to verify buoyancy. 

• Had incredible conversations with beekeepers across the globe whose fights against disease and weather would be bolstered by flood-resilience.

• Won:

  • The 2025 Climate Con Judge's Choice.

  • The Jack Rosen Memorial Award for Environmental Innovation.

  • The Quantum Valley Investments Problem Award.

  • The Engineer of the Future Award.

  • The 2025 Yorkshire Eco-Scholar Award. 

• Partnered with a humanitarian aid organization in Malawi, effectively granting us access to over 180,000 hectares of land to co-develop and test our solutions. 

• Were in the running to receive USAID funding for a pilot project before the Agency was dissolved. 

• Grew our core hive just a bit larger.

• Found a cool co-working space with other passionate people.

• Sent 293 emails (and counting).

• Stopped drinking coffee, and almost fixed our sleep schedules. Protecting pollinators still keeps us up at night.
  
  

And we're only getting started. 

Our award-winning presentation at Climate Con 2025, hosted by the Waterloo Climate Institute. Photo Credit: Harminder Phull.

As of this article, 76% of all agricultural output in the world is reliant on pollination to exist. Apples, avocados, blueberries, cherries, peaches, pears, plums, strawberries... these are just the well known (and alphabetized) fruits that simply don't exist without pollination. 

Prior to the closure of several US-based grant programs, many apiaries in America were supported by subsidies to assist with hive losses. These subsidies were a safety net against the volatility of climate instability, helping both commercial and small-scale beekeepers rebound after disaster. As those supports increasingly disappear, so will apiaries lost to flooding that have no backup. Our solution eliminates the risk of hive loss to flooding entirely.