Bee-free honey

Having entered the European honey industry in 2012, Darko Mandich has a long-standing passion when it comes to bees and our natural environment. After some research and personal lifestyle changes, he desired to take things one step further and start a new conversation on the industry, bringing forward a new perspective through the founding of MeliBio: a startup focussed on creating bee-free honey. In this week’s episode I chat to Darko about the ecological effects of honeybee populations, the risk of losing native species and the further implications this has for the health of our planet. We also discuss MeliBio’s approach, their future launch, and other startups that are bringing innovative solutions to the space.

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Image: MeliBio CEO and co-founder Darko Mandich.

We all know the European honey bee. They’re on the face of posters and t-shirts, a symbol of environmental harmony as well as climate catastrophe. However, MeliBio is on a mission to share the story of bees as a whole, with honeybees only making up a small portion of the tale.

Darko: ‘Honeybees are one of 20,000 bee species.’

And the relationship between the domesticated honeybee and wild, native species, can be quite negative.

Darko: ‘Honeybees can be aggressive, territorial and invasive towards wild and native bee species. So essentially humans wanting to meet the rising demand of honey production … creates ecological problems and a distortion of bee diversity.’

This is where the inspiration behind the work of MeliBio comes in.

Darko: ‘If we can have a superior sweetener with the amazing taste, mouthfeel and benefits - without the need to add new beehives on to the planet - we can help restore the balance of bee diversity.’

It’s this same fear of increasing a loss of biological diversity that has encouraged and fuelled the creation of new plant-based products, both within the meat and dairy sectors. However, despite these becoming more mainstream by the minute, there are few that understand why we should reform the way we make honey.

Darko: ‘There are some activities around bee-keeping which are not friendly towards bees. Specifically there’s a lot of smoking.’

This smoking is traditionally done in order to disrupt the bee’s line of defence, with pheromone signals being masked and as a result preventing the bee-keeper from being attacked.

Darko: ‘Then there’s artificial insemination of the queen and wing clipping. There’s also a pathogen spill-over when you pack thousands of bees into a truck and move them across the country.’

Even aside from the lack of animal welfare these practices hold, they also signify something much larger for Darko and the team at MeliBio. They signify the continuation of unsustainable honey production, and thus the continued loss of thousands of species and intricate ecological relationships, that ensure the health and vitality of Earth’s systems.

Darko: ‘We anticipate that our customers will be everyone who is conscious about their purchasing behaviours and how the product they purchase with their dollars plays a role in helping this planet.’

We also spoke about the technological advances being made in the space, not only with regards to MeliBio and their innovative approach to replacing honey - but also when it comes to replacing honeybees in their other role: primary commercial pollinators.

Darko: ‘We specifically identified a startup working on producing robotic bees from the United States, and we also know there’s a startup from Japan that are working on a special bubble technology.’

Darko: ‘There are companies that are also working on the health and management of honeybees, however I really think that one of the main things that we need to do in our relationship with bees is to look at them as a whole.’

Which for Darko includes taking care of and considering the many other bee species that deserve public awareness and protection.

However, as many following our podcast would know, starting your own entrepreneurial journey can be a difficult path, and I was curious to hear how Darko has found bringing his new perspective and vision for the future of the industry he loves to life.

Darko: ‘I realised that the science is really getting there and there’s no reason for us not to have all the animal products in a form of production that doesn’t include animals.’

And with that realisation he packed his bags and made the move from Serbia to San Francisco where he began doing meet-ups, which is where he met his MeliBio co-founder, Aaron Schaller.

Darko: ‘When you have a team of people curious about a topic, liberated from any burden of the history, you can ask the right questions.’

Darko went on to talk about what he meant by the burden of history.

Darko: ‘For people with three or four generations of bee-keeping, it would probably be difficult to accept - at this moment - that the future of their industry will not be the same as now.’

Not having that pressure, or generational experience, means the team at MeliBio can approach the issues at hand progressively - through a lens of innovation.

Some aspects of their mission are also aimed at improving the cost and efficiency of the honey making process, which currently only utilises a couple of weeks within a year when desired crops are ready for pollination.

Darko: ‘We at MeliBio would be able to produce honey all year around, and we’d be able to reduce the cost of honey production at scale.’

The talk of cost reduction comes well-timed, with the current prices for certain honeys like Manuka skyrocketing at hundreds of dollars per pound in the United States.

Darko: ‘I believe that everybody deserves access to honey.’

At the moment MeliBio is pre-seed round, with a few companies signing up for purchasing their product once it launches at the end of this year.

If you’d like to learn more you can head to melibio.com where you can download the State of the Bees Report. Small things you can do in your local area to help bee populations include purchasing or building small bee hotels, as well as not cutting your lawn too often and staying open to new knowledge on the issue as it arises.

Darko: ‘Staying open and wanting to learn more about the world around you, can definitely help make this planet a better place.’