Bees to the Rescue

BUZZ! goes the bee,  Hour after hour,
BUZZ! goes the bee,  From flower to flower.

Sucking out the nectar, Flying it home.
Storing up the nectar, In the honeycomb

BUZZ! goes the bee, Making honey so sweet.
Bee makes the honey, That I love to eat!

 

For good or ill, most flowering plants cannot self-pollinate.  That means the plant’s future is dependent upon some mechanical process such as the wind to spread pollen and seeds.  As some point in their evolution bees found out nectar from attractive flowers tasted much better than the bugs they had been eating throughout the millennia.  To the advantage of flowering plants, bees became vegetarians, ‘making honey so sweet’ and fueling the spread of numerous plant species by spreading pollen from one flower to another. 

Why does an investor care?  It matters to our stomachs.  Among those plants that need help pollinating are those that feed humans: squash, corn, carrots, sunflowers, parsley, celery, sweet cherries, chestnuts, plums, pears  -  to name just a few.  Without bees the cupboard would be a bit bare!

Leave it up to arrogant humans to throw a wrench in the works.  Polluted air, dirty water, noise and dramatically reduced habitat have decimated bee populations.  Did we mention heavy truck and car traffic?  The Bumble Bee Conservation Trust estimates that in North America an estimated 24 billion bees and wasps are killed on roads every year.

If any climate change deniers are still reading here, we need only look at the coronavirus pandemic and the attendant shutdown of business activity to appreciate the human impact on bee populations.  Reduced traffic, lower air pollutants and curtailed roadside maintenance have fostered resurgence in bee habitat during 2020.  Six months into the COVID-19 nightmare, bee populations are buzzing!

Bee Vectoring Technologies International (BEE: CSX, TSX-V; BEVVF:  OTC/PK)  has a solution aimed at ensuring precious food crops flourish, all the while protecting bee populations. Bee Vectoring is not so concerned about pollination as dissease among flowering food crop plants.  The company takes advantage of bees’ busy flights from plant to plant to spread a non-genetically modified fungus.  The biological fungicide promotes crop health and prevents disease at a lower cost than chemical applications.  The bees pick up the fungus at the hive provided by Bee Vectoring and leave just a little behind on their visit to a flower. 

Apples and strawberries are two of the first crops to get help from Bee Vectoring’s bees.    Early test results suggest crops yields could be increase by as much as 30%. 

In August 2020, the company began a blueberry trial for the Institute for Sustainable Horticulture (ISH) at Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU) in British Columbia, Canada.  A fungicide has been specifically designed to target the fungal diseases found in blueberries. Management is hoping that Canadian blueberry farmers who participate in the trials will spread the word about the Bee Vectoring system.  Data from the trial will also be used to apply for Canadian product registration.   

Bee Vectoring describes its innovation as a ‘natural precision agriculture system’.  This seems something of an oxymoron given that there is often quite a bit of chaos and not much precision in nature. 

The company reported initial revenue in late 2019.  However, sales have been modest and the company is still bleeding deep red with a net loss of CN$5.4 million.  The bees used up CN$3.3 million cash resources in the twelve months ending June 2020, a better figure to gauge the company’s financial strength.  To support operations the company recently raised just under CN$1.0 million by selling common stock.  Most likely there is still room for both public and private investors as Bee Vectoring is likely to back to the capital market for financing to support its blueberry trials and eventually for its marketing budget.  

There remains considerable business risk as Bee Vectoring’s scientists and beekeepers move from proving the concept to running a business.  However, there are few investment opportunities that are as purely sustainable as this business model, making it…well…’the bee’s knees!’

 

 

Neither the author of the Small Cap Strategist web log, Crystal Equity Research nor its affiliates have a beneficial interest in the companies mentioned herein.