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The Bee Corp., an Indianapolis-based ag-tech firm that attracted widespread attention for its beehive technology, has shut down after eight years.
Co-founders Ellie Symes and Wyatt Wells, both Indiana University graduates, launched The Bee Corp. in 2016, after winning IU’s Business Entrepreneurs and Technology Competition that year. Initially located in Bloomington, the company later moved to Indianapolis.
The company’s signature technology, called Verifli, uses infrared imagery, data analytics and a smartphone app to determine the size of the bee colony inside a hive—a faster and less invasive method than manually inspecting the hive.
The Bee Corp restructured last year “to seek strategic alternatives to realize the full potential of its technologies,” Symes told IBJ via email this week. Then, in May of this year, the company dissolved its business registration with the Indiana Secretary of State’s office.
“The Bee Corp. dissolved the company, settled debts, and helped employees find new roles,” Symes wrote.
In June, Symes took a job as a program officer at the Indianapolis-based McKinney Family Foundation, which works to advance environmental sustainability in Indiana.
Symes told IBJ that The Bee Corp has transferred its Verifli technology to a new owner: the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Carl Hayden Bee Research Center. The center, which is in Tucson, Arizona, is part of the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service.
Symes declined to provide additional details, citing a confidentiality agreement.
The Bee Corp’s founders, and the company itself, gained significant acclaim during the firm’s 8-year run.
The Bee Corp. secured more than $3 million in total outside investment and grant funding over the years. That includes a total of $1.48 million in grant funding from the National Science Foundation’s Small Business Innovation Research program, which funds early-stage research and development at science and technology startups.
In TechPoint’s 2018 Mira Awards contest, Symes, then age 23, won the Rising Star award. TechPoint said at the time that Symes’ ability to secure outside investment and grant funding for the company, especially as a young female tech founder, was “both impressive and inspiring.”
Bee Corp. was also nominated for a Mira Award in the Innovation of the Year category in 2019, although it did not end up winning that award.
Forbes named both Symes and Wells to its 2022 30 Under 30 list, which recognizes young honorees in a variety of industries.
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