Abraham McCauley is cofounder and COO of Beemmunity, which develops and provides solutions that protect and preserve pollinator species. They’re changing how pollinators are viewed and the impacts of agrochemicals, preserving species for future generations. Listen to his fascinating story of personal, organizational and societal change on Nature Breakthroughs: Conversations with Changemakers in a World Gone Mad.
[00:00:00] Ben: Well, welcome Abraham McCauley to Nature Breakthroughs: Conversation with Changemakers in a World Gone Mad. I liked your story, because when I talk about change and I kind of call myself an expert of change on three levels: personal organizational and societal. And you got an interesting story on all three.
And I want talk about all three aspects, which is, well, we met because you did something that the startup guru Steve Blank calls, “getting out of the building.” You've heard that phrase?
[00:00:41] Abraham: I read the book and that's exactly how we met.
[00:00:44] Ben: Yeah. And you contacted me as a potential customer of your products, and you got out of the building to find out what a customer might think.
And then you sent me some videos about your involvement in microadventures, where I heard the story that you kind of hit a rock bottom phase in your life, a turn-around, or needed to change things up. And then of course you entered the world of startups. And so, after that kind of personal change, you went into the whole world of the kind of constant iteration and pivoting I'm sure that you have to do with startups. I want to talk about those things. And then the final thing I'd like to talk about is societal change where we're going to talk about bees, because you're the co-founder, right, and COO—
[00:01:43] Abraham: I'm the co-founder and COO. We have our CEO and the inventor of the technology.
[00:01:48] Ben: Right, cofounder and COO of Beemmunity. And so, I want to talk about bees and how bees are going to save the world maybe, or how you might play a role in that. So, can we start with the personal, like how did you start this adventure and what happened?
[00:02:11] Abraham: Exactly, exactly. But yeah, but thanks for having me. Our conversation was good, so we needed to follow up with this, but yeah, you're right. I think there was a significant personal change that has everything to do with nature. So, how the story goes is, so I was at university and then I was in a relationship—
[00:02:35] Ben: Where are you calling from, first of all?
[00:02:37] Abraham: So, at the moment I'm in London. I'm a bit all over the place. The start of the year with Beemmunity, it was in New York, and then I'm back in London, and then I'm probably going to make a change in September, but it's exciting at this stage of life. I'm happy to kind of move, but—
[00:02:53] Ben: So, you're from London? That's where the accent is from: a London accent?
[00:02:57] Abraham: No, no, no, no, no. I'm from Ireland originally. Yeah, a place just outside Belfast, a place called Downpatrick, where the bones of St. Patrick are buried. So, I'm used to country living. I'm used to kind of having plenty of space being outside. So, being in London, it's kind of that juxtaposition.
[00:03:13] Ben: Oh, no wonder you're such a good storyteller—you're an Irishman.
[00:03:16] Abraham: That's it. But yeah, I was in university and then I managed to get a job working for JPMorganChase. That was the culmination of my 14 years of schooling: get a good job or after university get a good job. So, I did. I went down to London and I was working there and I had had a girlfriend from university and she wasn't in London.
But long story short: that relationship broke up. And whenever you're in a tumultuous place of—you've just broken up with someone—you feel quite bad. It's hard to think straight. There's quite a physical reaction to that. So, as you rightly said, I was probably in rock bottom at that place. Well, at that time.
[00:04:06] Ben: So, it begins with a heartbreak.
[00:04:10] Abraham: Oh, well, all good things—a broken heart as it is a hard thing to have, but it's also, it's a good thing that, but my friend James—he'll come up in the story later. He's actually the co-founder of this venture that we're doing. He went through a similar thing. So, we're both sitting there. I think we met up one Sunday. I was sitting there heartbroken, ah, things. Oh my God. Just dejected. We were thinking about what can we do to just have some fun or do something? And I had heard of this podcast, it was a guy called Alastair Humphreys.
So, he's the guy who kind of came up with the concept of microadventures. And I heard him on a podcast, and he was talking about there's this idea where you go out any day during the week. You go out after you finished job at five. You go and take a commuter train and sleep on the hill, have a campfire, jump in a river, come back the next morning, back at your desk at nine.
And that means you've had this amazing adventure and you haven't had to do anything with work. So, I said this to James, he was like, “oh yeah, sounds good, that'll be fun, we'll do something crazy!” And then came around to the point where we're supposed to do it.
[00:05:24] Ben: Sleep deprivation as a medicine?
[00:05:28] Abraham: I tell you, that the payoffs are pretty amazing. We thought about it at dinner one night and we'd looked up on Google where to go and we had it all planned.
But I remember coming up to the night before and James and I are quite stubborn. So, we were both stubborn to not let the other one get away with not doing this thing. So, anyway, we went into work the next day, five o'clock came around. We kind of plan where we're going to meet up and we just went. We went on this adventure, and we went out to beside the seaside.
Got off the train and didn't know where we were. Started to experience these new places. So, things went really slow, because you're always observing. And then we went up to where we're going to camp that night. Had a bit of a fire, some food, and went to sleep. And as you rightly said, the sleep was terrible.
The next morning, I woke up and had this crazy sunset and you're like, oh my God, this is pretty decent. And then I'm on my way back into work the next day. And I'm the only one smiling on the commuter train. And I find this pretty surreal experience where I'm sleeping. I haven't had to take any time off work.
I'm going back to work. Nothing's been disrupted, but I'm happy. And I'm kind of having this joy inside me. So, that was the first kind of time we did a microadventure. I basically, what we learned from that is: these things are fun and next time bring a mat to sleep on because it's a lot more comfortable.
But in the end, I did like 18 of these. I remember feeling a lot of peace and kind of perspective after just being in nature. And those worries, and a lot of the thoughts that are in my head and ways of behaviors that I was in, just kind of, they were halted. And I was able to think a bit more clearly about the worries that we had, so there's a few lessons I kind of got from that, and they've helped me throughout the next journey that we’ve been doing.
And one of them is a lot of your worries that you have never really kind of happen. Seneca, the stoic philosopher, he said: we suffer more in our imagination than we ever do in reality. So, for James and I, we were making up excuses to not do this thing. Like we were saying, oh, it's going to rain tomorrow. Or there might be a deer that'll eat our leg off in the middle of the night. Or what about this happens? Or what about that happens? And, you know, we called ourselves out and said, look, we're just going to have to do it. And we did it. And it was phenomenal. Yeah.
So, we've done three or four, or I'm sorry, as I said, I did eighteen. And I remember, I prescribed myself these microadventures because every time I did it, it was just, oh my God, I feel so. I don't know, clear thinking. I had perspective. I didn't have any sleep. My energy was low, but I was just happy.
And that was very encouraging. So in the culture at the time, especially in London, nobody's really, it's hard to get that green space exposure. It's hard to get out into nature. But it's also very materialistic or kind of where is my success going to be from? But I realized that to have a really good quality of life and a simple life, you don't need much. You can go and sleep on a hill.
I'm not saying everybody should go to sleep on hills, but you don't really need a huge amount of things to get that happiness or peace. And I think it's more of: you need to check in regularly. But yeah, there's plenty more I could speak on the microadventures, but I would really say that these kinds of microadventures, they changed my life, changed my perspective, changed how I felt physically.
I think it's one of the most powerful, noticeable changes in how you feel. There's whenever I went out and I slept on the ground, and I think sleeping on the ground and having your face just open, because we didn't have tents. We slept in these bivy bags; it's like a waterproof covering for a sleeping bag.
So, you're looking up in the stars and you're lying on the ground. And it's just that kind of exercise is powerful. So, yeah, I did that while I was in London and actually how it changed my life is, I was coming back in after these microadventures, the only one smiling and just kind of seeing everyone, the kind people who been here 10, 15 years.
And I was like, is this kind of, is this where I want to be? And a lot of times you get caught up in places because you think of the worries that could happen if you get out of a situation or you don't do something. So, I was encouraged to think about maybe leaving London and leaving that secure career.
And there were a few people encouraging me, but it didn't really seem like a huge thing, because it's stepping out, it's an adventure. I feel so many people want to have an adventurous life. But adventure basically means embrace the uncertainty. Go out and embrace it and see what happens there. There might be bad things, and kind of take them on and enjoy them.
But most of the time, it's good things. A bit of a side, when I think that a key to a really long life is to do something new every day, because your brain takes in everything new that you're seeing. So, like for example, you're driving home, and you get home. You don't remember actually driving home, because your brain is used to that.
But if you're going into these new experiences, your brain is really working to take things in. And everything feels longer. I remember I was going on these microadventures, and the key thing is it's a nine-to-five microadventure, because, and we all work hard, but say you work from nine to five, that's only eight hours of your day.
So, what about the other 16 that you have to play with? Most of us kind of go home, get ready for the next day to begin. And then we start again for those eight hours, but then we get ready for the next cycle to begin. There's so much to do in between. Yeah, so I did the microadventures.
I was lucky enough to, as that's a video that you were able to see, I was invited to speak to a group of Londoners about how microadventures changed my outlook, changed how I felt. And I haven't done one in a while and I'm feeling it. So, I think it's been good to kind of revisit this and I'll have to get out again.
[00:12:05] Ben: You said that it was like a check-in. And I think you're checking in not only with nature, but with yourself.
[00:12:15] Abraham: Yeah. I think just to kind of try to illustrate how it feels, it's if you think about charging, you're just basing yourself or you're earthing yourself, and you, really, if you lie down for an extended period of time on the ground, you're earthing yourself, I think. And you start to understand how nature kind of goes, and the cycles of nature. No matter what, we're living in interesting times now, but no matter what, the sun is going to come up and it's going to go down tomorrow. There's a lot we can do, we can try to think and worry, but nature is always going to keep going. It will be resilient. But I think, yeah, if you really check in with yourself, because it's like a huge—think of the most huge, amazing, deep breath you've ever had. It's like when you wake up, you're like, ahh, because it puts things into perspective.
Whenever we're not in nature, we think other things are important or things get in the way, but I really felt like a check-in. And kind of on the point of check ins: it's a kind of a form of meditation. I remember that one of the three steps you have for entrepreneurs, it's kind of that meditation part.
And I was thinking today, when I read that it was kind of similar to me who was out of a transitional period, trying to build a relationship, trying to build a life and relationships that didn't really work out. I think one of the most important things you can do during a breakup is to meditate and to quiet those thoughts that come into your head. But I think the big part, Ben, of what we're saying is: being out in nature, those worries or thoughts that you have suddenly kind of just, they get put in their place and you're able to feel a bit more clarity. Yeah, absolutely. That's what I felt.
[00:14:12] Ben: You know the ones I've been doing for the past few years is, I've created this event called the Wild Call Weekend. But it's all about taking like a microadventure, but a little longer than yours. It's like a three-day version that's rooted in, you know, this is rooted in a very ancient practice of how people deal with change. You know, it's a rite-of-passage ritual, basically.
[00:14:39] Abraham: Yep. Yep.
[00:14:41] Ben: You know, one thing that occurs to me, and mine is more intense where you do a 36-hour fast alone the woods. So, you have no—the kind of core of it is: the three taboos of no food, no shelter and no contact. So, you have no contact with anyone. It's like a deep, deep check-in with yourself and with nature and, you know, like you say, when most people come on these things, in advance, they have a million fears of like animals and nature and bugs and rain.
And then what it turns out, at least in my experience with everyone that's come through, is the most difficult part of it is just being with yourself and not, you know, not being distracted by other people's information. And another thing that occurred to me about this is, you know, a big modern, probably the biggest kind of modern revitalization of these ancient practices comes from, I believe, England in the form of Outward Bound, which I assume you've heard of, right?
[00:15:56] Abraham: I haven't really heard of those.
[00:15:58] Ben: Outward bound is like a program that is for youth, but also for adults, but where they—
[00:16:05] Abraham: Yes, I think, yeah, I think I've heard of them.
[00:16:09] Ben: I think it was developed after World War I. And it was very like nautical in origin. I think it was developed by... I'm not sure of all the details, but it had a kind of military nautical origin, and it was like a training.
It was kind of a bootcamp, but it was a bootcamp in nature, you know? So, there's a big, like British tradition of doing this, going into nature. And those are usually done in groups. The aloneness, well, there is I think a core part of it all along has been, I don't remember what they call it, but there is an alone time in the wilderness, there's a kind of training and then there's an alone time. And there's this aspect to it, you know, at least in America, I don't know if it's true in England, where there's a lot of people in the kind of prepper community where there is a kind of survivalist aspect to this. But again, like with mine, you know, that's what everybody's thinking: that they have to survive, you know. There's this survival mentality that the challenge is going to be survival and getting food, getting fire, all that stuff.
And like, with mine, you're definitely not allowed to make a fire in the in woods, because who knows, you know, people don't know, I mean, I don't know what can happen. But I think for me, the more profound aspect of these kinds of practices are more spiritual in nature. And in some ways, there's kind of, that's the whole point, is to move out of the survival mindset and into a kind of more of a, let's say, transformational mindset where all the worries and concerns of the survival mode that we live in day to day, and that really constricts our view, kind of fall away when you're out in nature and alone. And you start, like you said, things get, you develop a broader perspective.
[00:18:16] Abraham: Yeah. And the thing, you know, you're right. Going back to the check-in thing, whenever you're in that niche, where you're in nature and you're doing that more survival thing where it's not happy comfort, and you're not in your RV.
One way that I started looking at it was it's the check-in. It's kind of: okay, you go and do these, like for my case, it was a microadventure, but in your case, and I would love to do one like that, it's a bit more, I probably have to build myself up to, but you're going on, you're checking in on your surviving for this amount of time, like 36 hours.
It's not a huge amount of time, but it feels long during it, but you're surviving. And I think after that, you're like, the realization is I survived, and I had fun and there was joy. So, it's kind of going down to the simplistic, basic things. Like if you think of the concept of holidays, they were, a lot of them were designed to let you go, and this is a day you do nothing. This is a day where you fast or you kind of check in. And if it was good enough for all those people over a thousand years, I just think it might be good for us. But it's to check in. And I think that's a way, it's a path to a life well lived when you're doing these check-ins, so you're simplifying everything.
You're cutting out a lot of indulgence or a lot of kind of comfort to then appreciate that comfort and those things that you have. Like, it's the origin of first-world problems. Whenever you're in a really comfortable place, like both of us live in the Western world and we're very fortunate in our positions, but if we're constantly on a flat line, we're not checking in, even the smallest up and down can feel: oh my God, this is so bad. Whenever you're checking into the most basic things, in your case, it's fasting or just kind of not doing anything, or just being in that rawness of nature. That is the differences between the two that really kind of, yeah, give you perspective and also make you really, really appreciate what you do have.
[00:20:25] Ben: So, I think the key is, you know, everyone thinks of survival as having to learn skills and having to do things. And what you find when you do this kind of thing is you don't actually have to do anything.
[00:20:41] Abraham: Yeah, it's the case of not doing anything, which helps you to feel life.
[00:20:45] Ben: It’s really about not doing anything and realize that's comfortable. You know, the ground is comfortable, the sky is comfortable, the breeze is comfortable. The trees are comfortable. Animals are, you know, I mean, obviously there's danger, but the danger is sporadic. It's not ever-present. And I think all of us live in a world where, you know, there's so much risk aversion and fear of risk.
And especially in times of pandemic, you know, everybody's kind of just freaking out and you really don't have to do anything—most, yeah, most of the time.
[00:21:24] Abraham: Yeah. And it's getting into that peace, because there will always be turmoil everywhere. And I feel there's always something next to look at in terms of, like, I sort of say, there's all this chaos, chaos "A". If that chaos A goes away, we'll start talking about chaos "B". You know, there's always something out there to kind of turn your attention to. And I think in terms of technology as well, there's a certain push to keep us active in our brains. Not doing anything. I think personally, a lot of people that know me and might kind of agree.
I think there's a lot of credit to not doing anything. When people say, "Hey, how was your holiday?" And someone replies, "great, I did nothing, I have nothing to comment on." I think you did your holiday well, your vacation was good. But instead, there's an anxiety. I need to do this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this, and then you start to put expectation in there and then you probably come back with no money, and you probably had an okay time, you know.
[00:22:29] Ben: Turn it back to the real world, I mean, in some ways, if people took this up in a big way, the economy would collapse. I mean, the economy depends on the holiday economy. It's all about going places and spending money and doing things, and visiting, you know, but what you're talking about, these microadventures, I mean, there's a little bit of going somewhere, but of course you could also do something similar without going anywhere.
[00:23:00] Abraham: Yeah. So, the whole principle of it is to find adventure in your local area. So, for example, I'm in London, or I was in London and that's a big difference, because you're in a box room, you go to your box train, you go to your box office. And then you kind of repeat that cycle. I think not checking into nature is one of the biggest parts of burnout.
[00:23:21] Ben: There's a lot of new science about how, you know, what's the word I want, it's not intuitive, but there's so much kinesthetic learning that we do, that's not in our head. And that requires motion and gesture and verbalization, and you know, living and working seated in boxes without moving, the whole educational system is like trying to train us, you know, to sit in one place and to not fidget.
And what I think the new science is showing us is that we have not over thousands of years been designed to be like this. And that actually even for the economy, our productivity increases when we take physical breaks and do physical things. I mean, the way it's most commodified is with exercise, you know, and exercise is one way to do it, but it's kind of like, well, let's see, how can we commodify? How can we turn it into a capitalist product to get the physical—
[00:24:32] Abraham: Benefits? Yeah, I think that's kind of, what I was going to say is, but if everyone does something like this, and they do it once and they say, "right, okay, I loved that or hated it," I think everywhere will be a lot better, because we connect with nature. Like a big part of what I'm doing now is because I took that first step of a microadventure. People will take more calculated risks. They'd worry less, worry less about money. They wouldn't spend as much on superfluous things.
We’d probably care a lot more about the environment where I think things will be a lot better if people cared more about nature or also had the opportunity to be in nature. Not everyone has that. But things are on our doorstep, you know.
[00:25:23] Ben: So, you quit investment banking.
[00:25:25] Abraham: Yeah. So, I quit a big promising career at JPMorgan.
And for me, that wasn't hard because all the excuses that were coming up was because why are you leaving a great job? Like, are you worried you're not going to have a good future? With London, a great place to be, why are you leaving? It's going to be terrible if you don't. Those are all excuses that we can limit ourselves.
So, I said, well, finally, why are you leaving JPMorgan? Because there's a lot more in the world out there. Why are you leaving London? Because there's a lot, there's high quality of life outside of this place. And I wasn't worried, I was able to explore maybe I think looking back, I'm glad I was a bit out of my mind, because it did it, but it was, yeah, it was an interesting move, but—
[00:26:12] Ben: You probably wouldn't have done it without the heartbreak.
[00:26:15] Abraham: I probably wouldn't have. Yep.
There's a lot of things in my life where I've been going down certain paths and certain things have happened. I have learned a lot from them and they're a painful, difficult, but to say they wouldn't happen…. I'd find it difficult to say I wish that didn't happen.
Because there've been huge benefits or huge things that have happened from that. And they all, I think the running theme is the uncertainty comes up again because you're, if you leave JPMorgan or a company like that or leave a friend group from where you are, there's uncertainty into the next step, which kind of brings us, brings on what I'm doing today.
[00:26:55] Ben: Plunged into the uncertainty. What was it?
[00:27:00] Abraham: I think there was a couple of parts. I was talking about a specific place I was at. Although I was doing these microadventures to check in, it was still a hard, London was a hard place to live. There's a lot of... you're working hard. You're like maybe you're socializing quite a lot and it just, it can drain you down. I didn't see a lot of impact vision in terms of what I was working at. So, I wanted to get out of London, and I just said, I'm going to leave. I've got to do anything. I was blessed that I was able to be, I was able to work remotely for a bit.
But then I said, look, I need to kind of move on from that. So, I quit. And enter stage right, the guy I did these first microadventures with: James Webb. So, he messaged me one day, and he said, “hey, I've been in Cornell, and I've been working on this product.”
So, long story short is he was at Cornell University, and he was doing a class project. One of those ones where they say, like, if you could do anything and change anything, what would you do? And he thought about, you know, the bees are a big problem and has anyone actually thought about cleaning them? So, he went away and read a few papers and came up with an idea. A professor sponsored the deal, and he did it.
And he created this technology we could talk about later and he wanted to make a company out of it. So, he messaged me and said, "hey." He'd be a big support whenever I was going through this leaving JPMorgan and the big corporate life. He'd say—he's a lot crazier than I am; although, he'd say different from me—but he said, "yeah, dude, like, life's a bit too short."
So, I did it. But he sent me this video, which was showing the outline of kind of what his product was or what the company would be. And I said, “have you got a pitch deck?” So, my niche that I had carved for myself at JPMorgan was making pitch decks, which are basically storytelling cards.
So, I was really good with graphics and kind of getting the story correct. So, I helped him do that. And then we went, and we pitched to our first investors. I didn't really know what VC was about or what investment was. So, we pitched to them. He did all the science part. I made them laugh at the right moments.
And lo and behold, they said, "yes, we'll take you on, you're part of our accelerator." So that accelerator is called IndieBio. And that was based in New York. So, for one day I had left a company that was very secure. And I was insecure. And then I was in an opportunity to actually capitalize on this venture.
And to me, it didn't really seem risky because James and I had formed this relationship of, we do risky things together and they usually work. We have a lot of joy with it.
So, I wasn't scared jump in. So, that's kind of what we're doing now.
[00:29:57] Ben: You put that in the past tense. You weren't or you aren't?
[00:30:00] Abraham: I wasn't then. Maybe I am now.
No, but I think it's like, that's another check-in, because we could talk about it more, but it was only February in '21 that we kind of started this venture. It's now where we're in August and there's still a lot of work to do. There's still a lot of learnings that we've come across, and there's a lot of assumptions that we made early on that haven't really came out.
But we're still pressing on. There's a lot of uncertainty with these things. Like that's what venture capital is about. Like adventure, venture means going out into the unknown. Like going to an adventure park is really cool, but it's not really adventure, but you kind of need to go on these ventures. And I would say what we're doing now is definitely adventure.
We don't know if it's going to work, but we're going to give it a good go.
[00:30:55] Ben: So, it starts with the idea of cleaning bees. So, tell us a little bit about the technology.
[00:31:01] Abraham: Yeah, so yeah, so the company is called Beemmunity. So, a bee and immunity, and one of the—James, kind of through his research, realized—one of the, a big, big problem is pesticides and bees.
So, pesticides among other things, of course, they have a huge impact on bees in general. So, the technology that we're currently using, and this is a second iteration. So, an important point: the first iteration that James worked on in the lab was recently published in the journal nature food.
So, there's a pretty significant peer-reviewed article. But that was only for one type of pesticide that we could kind of extract from bees, but the technology that we're using now is basically a micro-sponge that can be taken in as a feed for the bees and they can either drink it or eat it through the pollen.
And it goes into their gut. And what happens there is pesticides are usually within the pollen grains or the feed that they take. They usually ingest it. And our micro-sponge is about the same size as a pollen grain. And what happens in the gut is the pesticides or chemicals that are there, they're attracted to our micro-sponge and that's through specific receptors that mimic insect cells. So, pesticides are designed to go to these receptors, bind, the bind is strong, and not unbind. So, we're kind of putting a decoy into the gut and the pesticides are attracted to the micro-sponge, and the micro-sponge will then sequester them into an oil core. And after that fact, the bee will put it out in its stool. So, basically, although the bee had been in contact with pesticides, from using our treatment, the pesticides basically remain ineffective or inactive and then they're passed through the gut.
So, it can be thought of like an antidote to the pesticides.
[00:33:14] Ben: I haven't asked you this before, but can this be used on humans?
[00:33:17] Abraham: So, I think we've been having a lot of blue-sky thinking. Who knows? You know, we've only kind of been doing this for three or four months at the moment. There is a lot of—say if we wanted to do it with humans—there's a huge amount of work to be done. And who's to say it can't be done?
But the mechanisms? Absolutely. They would work within a human body and a lot of tasks need to be done.
[00:33:42] Ben: I mean, I assume, I may be wrong about this, but pesticides are usually like, are they mostly like volatile hydrocarbons or something like that? And—
[00:33:51] Abraham: There are different types of pesticides but not all of them.
So, for example, if they were to evaporate quite easily—and some do actually—if they were to evaporate all the time, it wouldn't be as useful for the farmers. But an interesting point on evaporation, and something I only learned recently, was that we are living in a hugely toxic environment. So, like, the Inuit people, there was a study done on their breast milk, and they found traces of agricultural pesticides all the way in these unreached people, because it was a volatile, went up into the atmosphere and rained down into the waterways and then through whatever fish they were doing. It's pretty bad.
[00:34:38] Ben: So, I was wondering if it can be used for heavy metals and other types of contaminants that are persistent, especially the persistent toxins that build up? I don't know if there's a way to sprinkle it over the oceans or....
[00:34:57] Abraham: I would love the vision if we're able to show that efficacy, and I think this kind of approach or this innovation— so I think that this product is innovative, because the innovations that have taken a lot of time is taking two things that shouldn't really work and making them efficient. And that's what James did, he thought about: okay, there's this piece of science over here and there's this piece of science over here. Why don't we apply it to bees?
So, as you're saying, our problem that we see is with bees, the science that we've done has shown that there's an effect on bees, but the impact could be a lot wider, because the pesticide problem is a lot bigger than just bees. Everybody has a bit of pesticides in them.
It's slowly built up. There's no vegetables or fruit that you can get around without a little bit of trace of pesticides. So, that could be definitely something that we'll look at in the future, but we're going to figure out the bee thing first.
[00:35:58] Ben: Yeah, so why start with bees? Tell me, give us a little bit of the big picture of why bees are a strategic intervention.
[00:36:06] Abraham: Absolutely. So, bees are—we all know that there's an issue with decline in bees—and bees are a very, very good pollinator, but like for example, in the U.S., every year about 40% of hives die or they're lost. And under the same time, about up to 50%, like 40 to 50% of bee species are declining and also going towards extinction. So, bees are extremely important. For humans, selfishly, it's because of their pollination ability. You could think of bees as holding up the foundation of the ecosystems, because they can pollinate flowers, which will then lead to plants and then animals eat the plants and then so on, so forth.
But a few stats, like one out of every three bites of food that we eat relies on bee pollination. Seventy-five percent of the crops that we are using in the U.S. require some sort of pollination. And also, there's an interesting trend where they might have crops that we’re growing more and more of them are becoming reliant on pollination; whereas, the bee populations, native and managed honeybees, they're going down.
So, with an increasingly toxic world, we're requiring these pretty wonderful creatures to go into this toxic environment. And that's simply doesn't—it can't go on like that. So, bees are crucial for our survival, and I think there's a, I'm not sure, it might well-known, but Einstein said if all the bees disappeared at one go, the human race would have about four years to survive, until we're decimated,
[00:38:06] Ben: I don't know who said it, something like, you know, humans are wiped off the face of the earth, you know, we'd be fine, but if insects were wiped off, there would be no life on earth.
[00:38:16] Abraham: Well, it's an insect apocalypse.
So, I'm from a finance background. I actually studied chemistry, so I know a bit about what I'm talking about, but, and also, I love nature, but learning this whole journey has been a huge learning experience and there's a lot going on. There is a huge insect decline. I was speaking to someone today, so it was another customer-discovery call, but he was talking about a despair that he felt when he went up to somewhere where he'd been as a child in the west coast of Ireland.
And he remembered getting plagued with all these insects, batting them away. Oh no, don't like that! But he went up there again, and he was like, "why am I not getting plagued with these insects?"
[00:38:59] Ben: They call it "The Great Thinning." Have you heard of that?
[00:39:03] Abraham: Yeah. And there's, if you look at your cars nowadays, there's not a huge amount of insects around.
So, I personally believe that we're making a toxic environment. Like how of lot of this stuff started was after the world wars when DDT or these brilliant, innovative chemicals were put out into the world, and they're persistent, they don't go away. And they're everywhere. They're in waterways. They have a huge effect on insects.
[00:39:35] Ben: Yeah. The modern environmental movement kind of started with that with Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.
[00:39:41] Abraham: Yep. The silent spring.
[00:39:44] Ben: The silent-spring metaphor—or it's not really a metaphor—but it's, you know, the birds eat the insects, so the silence is because the birds are killed and there's no birdsong.
[00:39:58] Abraham: Yep. And, and so I'm just, we're just thinking about bees, and we're just thinking about the insects, but it's everything else like, but birds are a huge part. Birds have an economic value to countries and birds are also pollinators. So, yeah, so we're just focusing on bees at the moment.
[00:40:16] Ben: So, tell me a little bit about the iteration of the product and how you're pivoting in the eight— what'd you say—eight months you've been doing this?
[00:40:24] Abraham: Let's say seven. Yeah, seven months. So originally we went in with this idea that okay, the commercial pollination space in the U.S., they need help, because they're like: 40% of all our hives are lost every year. And commercial pollinators, so basically guys who have huge amount of beehives, they ship all around the U.S., they're hired to pollinate crops. So, we saw a logical fit there. We could go in and sell our product. That's a specific benefit to them.
It'll help the hives not to die basically. And just the scale of this operation, like 80% of all hives in U.S. are shipped into California every year just to pollinate almonds. And that's around February. California being one of the largest producers. So, but they put all these hives onto big flatbed trucks, and they drive them miles and miles and miles and miles all across America to get to California. And there's a huge economic benefit because they charge up to about $200 per hive. And there's two hives that are on every acre.
So, for a beekeeper, this is big. It makes financial sense. So, we were looking at that. We're trying to see how we could slot in there, but there's a slow realization that the managed pollination space, it's okay. They have their own methods of doing things. We could really have an impact, but agriculture, in a way, there are thin margins.
It's a tough place to be. I feel like agriculture, these people will get a lot of blame in terms of the impact that they're having, but economically, they're getting their—it's really a big struggle. So, for us to try to help and sell a treatment is difficult.
And I went on a few beekeeping expeditions, and I started to see what it was like with the honeybees in the hives, and they're traveling all around, but then you'd see the honeybee as livestock. So, although there are 40% losses every year, beekeepers over many years have gotten very good at recreating and rebuilding those hives.
So, in a way, the honeybee hive, commercially, it's almost flatline. So, on that point, honeybees aren't really, there's not a huge issue with honeybee decline.
[00:43:16] Ben: They're not as much in danger as the native pollinators.
[00:43:19] Abraham: They're not really in danger, and they've gotten a lot of the airtime. It's the most one we know, and people like honey, so they like the honeybee.
And I think that's a good thing overall, that it'd be good to preserve and use this species. There's also negatives to that. So, for example, this one specific species of bee, it can reduce the biodiversity, and because it's hugely prevalent, the native pollinators are those wild ones, the crazy ones that you see out in your garden and you don't recognize, they're really suffering.
And in a couple of ways because they're competing for forage. So, there's not a lot of flowers around. But they also spread diseases, the honeybees, because this one type. So, we were as a company, we were like, this is a very challenging experience to be just for beekeepers, the commercial guys often, they're probably not in a position to actually pay for this.
So, if we want to kind of be a proper company or a venture, there needs to be some sort of economic benefit. And who knows, right now, honeybees are cheap. Bees are cheap because we can recreate them. But that may not be the case in the future as we become more of a toxic environment or the levels that we've done, there's a tipping point.
So, we turned our attention to the wild bees. And that's what a lot of the work that we're doing now is how can we, through this technology or through our initiatives, through the position that we have, firstly, increase awareness of all bees, but also, remediate that the decline of wild pollinators.
[00:45:00] Ben: And I heard a wild statistic, which I think you've corrected me on it that there's like thousands of wild bee species in North America and—
[00:45:11] Abraham: Yeah, well, so yeah, I did my homework and I think you were correct. There are 4,000 species of bee that are native to North America, but globally there are about 20,000 species of bees or types of bees.
[00:45:25] Ben: None of the North American bees produce honey. So, it's all the agricultural, all the honeybees are imports from Europe: Italy—
[00:45:34] Abraham: Yeah, it's one type. I'm sorry, I'm not going to try to pronounce it, but it's the European honeybee. It's one specific type. It's pervasive. It's useful for humans, because we, and I'll also point out we've been able to domesticate it over years and years and years and years.
So, in a way we've tamed the bee. They're not as wild as they once were. In a way, maybe they're not as robust as they once were in the hives. But like, if you, conversely, if you look at the African killer bee, there's no issue with them. Pesticides can't kill them. You know, it's an interesting phenomenon. But yeah, there's huge amount of variety.
If we want to have an impact on nature, we want to increase biodiversity. We want to decrease risk of one thing really kind of wiping us all out, but there's a lot.
[00:46:30] Ben: How do you sell a product to help wild honeybees when there's not a commercial market behind that?
[00:46:38] Abraham: You create one. We're the visionaries! Look, this podcast is called changemakers!
[00:46:43] Ben: But how do you create a market for wild bees, a product for wild bees, wild pollinators?
[00:46:51] Abraham: We're taking a focus on wild pollinators and the native bees and the ones that you see around your area, like bumblebees, they're not honeybees, but we see them.
And they're almost a kind of poster child because they're big and fluffy. But what we're working towards and what we're developing currently is a bee feeder. So, it will be a product that will specifically attract bees and will allow an individual to use our technology to help the bees in their area.
So, there's a few critical things that we need to incorporate, and we need to work on. But it'll be a place where you could actually grow flowers, grow perennials, and it'll still have these things that can act as foragers for bees and attract. It'll also be a water source. So, bees need water. They need a place to rest.
We're working to see if there's like a bee hotel kind of aspect in there. But yeah, we want to empower people to actually have an impact on all the wild pollinators around them in their gardens, in their area. And it's in a way it's a de-centralization. So, if you think about the big picture, we need to protect these bees. We need to help them; we need to feed them.
And we need to give them protection from the toxic environment that we've created. One way to do that is through a bee feeder you can put into your garden and into your area. And there's benefits all around. So, if you're a gardener and you have this bee feeder, and there's more bees coming to your area, and you're allowing them to live longer and potentially have more nests around the area, that will help your plants, that will help your garden, that will help your vegetables.
And a key thing here, I'm sure if anyone's listening, is will bees sting you? And they're bad. But most native bees are solitary. They have no nests to protect, and they're quite docile, and they won't. They don't really sing you. So, yeah, that's the initiative that we're working on is to create a bee feeder.
We're really giving this a go. We're investing in this. There's not really, as you said, there's not really a market for that at the moment, but I think this could definitely be a way that people can really make an impact on their environment and also really help bees. And I think a huge part of it is education.
So, if there's this specific thing there and, or it's a product, okay, what's that doing? Or how is that actually working? What's the benefit of it? We could really raise awareness.
[00:49:31] Ben: So that's a big pivot from a B2B to a direct to consumer. It sounds like a contraption. And, and you're going to have to, my guess is you're going to have to piggyback on something. You know, creating a market—I’ve done this in my entrepreneurial ventures—not easy!
I don't know, there's some rules of thumb about this, like where you create a—I can't remember what they are, but it sounds like you need to piggyback somehow on an existing market or you need to take a proven model and replicate it, like moving, just shifting a little bit over. And it sounds to me, like, well, first of all, there's got to be a huge, well, I don't know the statistics, but I'm sure that gardening, you know, the home gardening market is substantial.
[00:50:23] Abraham: It is. It's pretty big. So, what will, in terms of market or however we had looked at this, is if you think of bird feeders, so bird feeding isn't a hard—bee feeding is a hard thing for people to visualize. Bird feeding isn't. They are very different, but like for example, 42% of households in the U.S. and Canada have a bird feeder or feed birds. And they would spend maybe $90 a year on this activity. So, the market in the U.S. for just bird feeders and bird feed is about four to six billion dollars. But the gardening, yeah, all gardening surfaces, I think if you Google it, it's about $60 billion
[00:51:10] Ben: Is there a way to include this in a bird feeder, like a bird-bee feeder?
[00:51:14] Abraham: The birds and the bees! Is that what you're talking about? Yeah. I think that definitely will be. We are early on our kind of prototyping stages.
We're trying to make people concentrate on the bee feeder and concentrating on how it impacts bees. I think the pesticides do impact birds as well. I'm trying to figure out, is there a way we can do it for birds, but I do think there is a way to incorporate it for bees. It may be an issue if you have a bee and a bird feeder, whenever the bees come to feed, the birds feed on the bees.
So, there might be ways to work around that. But in terms of piggybacking on and understanding where the market is, I think there are big changes coming up or we're experiencing, and we're going through a big change in how people behave or where they put their, where they put resources. Where we are, there's a zeitgeist in the world and through age groups and generations. We feel a bit powerless to the environmental issue. Like for yourself, you even, you've been doing this a lot longer than most people. And you've dedicated a large part of your life to it. I'm sure. We all feel that we have some sort of duty to do, or we feel a little bit of despair about what's really happening with the world, and there's not a lot of good news.
And it's hard to see what we can do. But people are making significant life changes for the environment. But for most people, those significant things are extreme. So, like going vegan or to make other choices or only buying organic, there's an economic hit to that. And a lot of people can't do that.
So, through a bee feeder product, we are allowing people to connect with nature. We're allowing people to have that impact and we're allowing people to make a change. And I think if we do it well, we show it really works. We are science forward. I think we're going to have a good product that people can actually use and make an impact.
I know it's an interesting one, but being in that kind of an environmentally focused place, because you're creating another product. You’re adding to what's out there. So, yeah, there is still a bit of work to be done to kind of: what's the benefit of it? The benefit will always be worth it, to help the bees.
Is this the right way to do it through the product? But we're going full speed ahead. We're hoping that slowly but surely, we can definitely grow the prominence of this.
[00:53:55] Ben: What's your timeline? Like when do you think they'll be ready? When will you'll be ready to market, ready to bring to market?
[00:54:03] Abraham: Whenever the cows come home? So, we're currently in the development stage. And so, we did talk about the beekeeping space. We're still developing that. We are going into trial to see what the product’s doing at high levels. And we're continuing to work on that, and we will have that line, but we see what we're doing as having a big impact.
And so, we're in the development stage, product development that'll probably bring us into the new year. And then we'll get some testing, but I think by next summer or next spring-slash-summer, whenever the bees are out in full forest, we'll have something to offer people.
[00:54:43] Ben: You know, I just started beekeeping myself this year.
[00:54:46] Abraham: Congratulations!
[00:54:47] Ben: I now have learned a couple of things. One is that the bees, they don't, it's my understanding is that they don't forage within like 50 feet of the hive. So, they, you know, there's tons of flowers, for example, around where my hive is, but they don't touch the flowers nearby. They fly, and I don't know how far they fly, but I think—
[00:55:12] Abraham: I think that there's up to like a 5k radius. They will go about—don't quote me on that— they fly quite far.
[00:55:20] Ben: I realized that just like a block away from me, there's this like an abandoned field that's I think is a bit of a toxic waste dump. Not a dump, but I think it's got contamination. And I'm thinking, you know, oh my God, I hope my bees don't forage there!
If they do, I need your product, I need like yesterday!
[00:55:41] Abraham: That's true. So, we're still developing that for beekeepers as well. Like there's a big issue with spraying and there's a few kinds of apps out there to try to alleviate the fact that if a neighbor is spraying, what are you going to do with your own hive?
Because it's hard to stop them going away. A lot of people close them up, but like, what we could do with our product is you apply a patty, which will have our technology in it. Close your hive. They have something to eat on, and it's protecting them. And then once the spraying is done, they'll have this protection, and they can go out, and they can, you know, it'll have a less of an impact. But yes, if you're beekeeping, most of the issues that are impacting your bees, it's not because of you. And pesticides are everywhere.
There's toxic waste everywhere, like bleaches and pesticide. And in cities are—we have a lot of pesticides everywhere. And although we might think they just go away, they don't. They really, really build up.
[00:56:41] Ben: Yeah. And you always hear, you know, the best thing for like allergies and stuff is to eat local honey. But then, you know, the more I've done this, you know, I've learned that especially if you're in an urban environment, there's no such thing as organic honey. I mean, the bees, they're like, they eat everything. And there was a recent story in Brooklyn, I think where the hive was full of red, nasty tasting, honey.
They're like, "where's this from?" I think it was like, they were eating all the waste from a maraschino cherry factory. And it produced like a toxic, I don't know if it was toxic, but a nasty red honey.
[00:57:24] Abraham: Something that's not natural.
[00:57:25] Ben: If you have bees in an urban environment, you're almost guaranteed it's going to include all kinds of stuff.
[00:57:36] Abraham: Yeah. We're testing to see what our product can do in terms of purifying honey or stopping those pesticides specifically, but other chemicals from kind of going in the cycle and to be stored as honey. We're doing tests on that, but yeah, I think what we're talking about there is there's a lot of unnatural things that come into play, and a lot of it's through human intervention, but like what our vision is and going back to the start is to let nature be nature.
I've seen by just interacting a little bit with nature how it can change your life, but for bees, through our product, we're allowing the bee to just do what it's good at and surviving. And bees, they're really, really good at surviving, but we've put them into this pretty bad environment. So, I'm taking away the human aspect of chemicals.
Through our technology, and also an important point is this is all naturally derived. So, it's natural cells that we're able to work with, and it's natural oils that we're able to work with. So, through doing that, we can just protect the bees, take the pesticides away and allow them to do what they're good at and the benefits that they have.
But so, our vision is to just to try to heal nature and allow nature to be natural.
[00:58:59] Ben: What are the main feedstocks to the product? I mean, is it, when you say natural, what are the oils and stuff? Are they from—but I'm not asking for proprietary—
[00:59:09] Abraham: I can't give away too much of the secret sauce, but yeah, it's like the oils are, none of them are petroleum. They're all plant based. And there's specific technology that we're working with. We do derive that from natural resources.
[00:59:26] Ben: Very cool. Well, you know, it's inspiring. Your story is inspiring to me, and I hope everyone who listens. And I hope there's a lot more people like you that leave JPMorgan and start environmentally conscious businesses.
[00:59:46] Abraham: JPMorgan still needs to exist somehow. Like not everyone! But I think an interesting point where you're saying whatever we've been talking about is there's a natural kind of way of thinking. Not everyone can do this. Not everyone has the opportunity to do this, but those who have, or have a bit of an idea, I think a lot of your audience, a lot of people we speak to we're all similar-minded.
If those people who have the desire, make an impact. And that's what I hope, I don't think I'm inspiring to everyone, but to a few people who need a kick, I hope that that's kind of where we go.
[01:00:26] Ben: Here is huge. I mean, you're right at the beginning of a journey and, you know, I hope you stick to it.
And you know, I know what you need to do is to get something out into the market quickly. And even if it's not where you end up, you have to do something quickly, so you have revenues coming in. And I could just see a ton of ways that this can end up getting big either through the agricultural industry or through consumer products or through, it could be, you know, I don't know if other people are exploring this stuff as a medical technology, but it could also have applications for detoxifying, you know, humans and other species.
[01:01:17] Abraham: Yeah. Or even specialist kind of jobs like firefighters, they, every time they go in, they're exposed to huge amount of toxins, even farmers who have this application, but yeah. Look, we're on this journey, James and I. We're adventurers at heart, so we're excited.
We may fall flat on our faces, but I think we've had a good journey along the way, but we're ready to embrace this uncertainty. And if we want to make this change, it's all about embracing uncertainty. If you knew what the changes were going to be specifically, it'd be easy to just go jump in. But when you are going through change, no one knows what it's going to look like.
But I say I'm comfortable. I mean, we all have levels. But I think there are certain things that I see as truths and I always get back to nature and being in it and being around it, and honoring it is definitely one of those.
[01:02:13] Ben: You sound like a true adventurer and pioneer Abraham McCauley, and people can find out more at www.beemmunity.co.
And is there anything is there anything that you need from listeners?
[01:02:29] Abraham: Yeah, well, yes. So, you can find us at beemmunity.co, or if that's too difficult type in www.wearebeemmunity.com with two "m's" and go there. And there's a waiting list you can sign up for, but I'd love to speak to people, speak to whoever's out there personally, to hear what they have to say, to get their feedback on what we're doing. And just to kind of hear what people think about bees, what they think about ways to impact the environment could be, and even how people can connect with nature more.
Like if I wasn't doing this bee thing, I'd definitely be trying to get these microadventures or basically probably trying to do what you're doing in terms of there's a huge benefit to people being in this niche. How do we convince them to do that? Because I think we'll have a big impact on how people feel, depression, etcetera, etcetera. But yes, you can find us at beemmunity.co. You can also sign up for our newsletter. But I'd love to hear from people. You can email me directly at abraham@beemmunity.co.
Feel free to share that about. I'd love to just speak to people.
[01:03:35] Ben: Great. Well, thank you so much.
[01:03:38] Abraham: No worries. No worries. Thanks for the opportunity. I don't really do podcasts, or I may have rambled a bit, but hopefully a few things I've said have landed.
[01:03:47] Ben: It was great. Thank you.
[01:03:49] Abraham: OK, Ben. Thank you so much.