Our team
Geoffroy Renaud
Mycologist and mycoenthousiast since 2014, Geoffroy is pushing the limits of the potential of mushroom extracts for all species. He's also doing his PhD on the potential of mycelium for green packaging and optimizing the medicinal compound of mushroom by improving the growing techniques and selection of strains.
Nico Coallier
Biologist since 2015, Mycologist since 2016 and Beekeeper since 2017, Nico continues to contribute to the advancements of beekeeping in many ways. He's the CTO at Nectar Technologies where he pushed the limits of beekeeping using state of the art deep learning techniques. He also manages 100-150 colonies where he tracks everything and leads the applied research at Cubee.
Ingrid Hochuli
Ingrid has many skills such as sales, customer success, and human resources. She's leading the sales and customer services here at Cubee. She's also involved in Flavo, the beekeeping business she co-owns with Nico Coallier. She's in charge of commercialization and she also opened a small grocery store to promote local products.
Our story
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Field trial started in 2021
Combining mycology and beekeeping seems only natural for us. Nico, our bee scientist, owned a mushroom farm a few years back where he met Geoffroy. Being aware of the few research that showed the potential of Reishi supplementation to increase honeybee resilience and health, we started to test different dosage of Reishi extract in the field. Ingrid and Nico own over 100 colonies in the Eastern Township, a perfect playground to develop Cubee !
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Good results make us skeptical
Following the first experiment where we supplemented colonies in the fall (directly in their syrup) we got highly skeptical. The results were strong, really strong...Were talking about a 200% increase in survival when not managing mites.
We then started to extend our research to cover different scenario of Cubee application, run cage trials in control experimental design and launch a large scale study with commercial beekeepers accross North America.
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Cubee is available since 2024, but we're still pushing
After 3 complete seasons of test in our research colonies, a large scale study on longevity in large scale commercial beekeeping and supporting evidence from other research groups, we decided to start commercializing Cubee. It doesn't mean we've stopped the research. We are still challenging Cubee and extending our research in other to better understand how Cubee works. We're still interested in gathering data to better understand the optimal dosage and frequency, the potential of other mushroom species for honeybees and many more questions are left to be answered. Buying Cubee also means supporting the applied mycology research in Honeybees!
Our vision
Applied mycology has the potential to truly change the game for beekeepers. In most regions of the world, the last decade has been challenging with new diseases, pests and overall environnemental pressure. Here at Cubee, we believe complex solutions are needed to solve complex problems and therefore an holistic approach using medicinal mushroom has great potential!
We believe beekeeping is a perfect system to demonstrate the potential of applied mycology. Transposing our findings to other livestock and reducing the usage of synthetic products that are specific and toxic could then be potential for all systems.
Our partners
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Miellerie Flavo
Miellerie Flavo has been our research partner since day 1. We've developed most of our science with these hives. Nico is the lead beekeeper and co-owner of Flavo with Ingrid.
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Nectar
We currently run a large scale study with some of their users. All Flavo hives are tracked with their technology. Since day 1, we have known the full historic of practices and state on all Flavo colonies. Nico is also the CTO at Nectar.
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FNG
FNG has been our partner since day 1 like Miellerie Flavo. We've developed the mushroom supplement with them, leveraging their large expertise in medicinal extracts for human consumption. Geoffroy is also the owner of FNG.
