The Bee Corp, an Indiana agtech start-up celebrates it’s five year anniversary this month. The Bee Corp, founded by Ellie Symes and Wyatt Wells, never imagined their founding of The Beekeeping Club at Indiana University would lead to running their own business – let alone revolutionizing hive grading and commercial beekeeping with their product, Verifli.

After introducing the concept in a student business competition, Symes and Wells walked away with an investment and an advisory board to help them develop the concept into an innovative, resilient company. The rest they say, is history.

“Since we started The Bee Corp 5 years ago, I’m deeply proud of our team’s growth and how we’ve learned to overcome adversity,” said Symes, The Bee Corp CEO and Co-founder.

Delivering a service of value hasn’t come without a few challenges. Wells, The Bee Corp CMO and Co-founder notes 5 lessons The Bee Corp team has learned in the past 5 years.

1. Learn through failure
2. Interview target customers before building anything
3. Build a strong network of mentors and advisors
4. Celebrate the wins — even the small ones
5. Plan for the best, prepare for the worst

Providing solutions that allow operations to operate at their best is what drives The Bee Corp — to capture the best data, the best resources and the best team. Beekeepers and growers asked for an objective hive grading system and The Bee Corp answered their demand with Verifli.

“Less than 3 years ago, we started working on an idea to measure bee colonies using infrared technology. Since then, we’ve built Verifli into a valuable software platform with a first-of-its-kind mobile app backed by a predictive model that incorporates physics, biology and real-time environmental factors,” said Symes.

Verifli, created by The Bee Corp team, is a digital hive grading system using infrared technology to measure a hive’s pollination output. By capturing hive performance data, Verifli provides transparency for growers and beekeepers who partner to pollinate crops. Using the Verifli dashboard, beekeepers and growers can uncover key hive strength and location information needed to drive pollination decisions — while not disturbing a single bee.

With pollination prices continuing to increase, The Bee Corp looks forward to another five years of continuing to deliver solutions that transform commercial pollination, and provide beekeepers and growers with faster, more accurate data to drive informed decisions.

“There are many exciting opportunities on our horizon that present new challenges for our team. Reaching the 5-year mark is a testament to our team’s ability to tackle difficult problems and deliver value to our customers,” said Symes.

Learn more about Verifli here, or test out the Verifli demo.