Founder's Story — How Intelligent Hives Was Born

It all started in 2015. Sebastian Górecki, then an Electronics and Telecommunications student at Lodz University of Technology, left a few jars of family honey in his brother’s garage, intending to surprise him. A few days later came an irritated call: “Seriously? You just threw the jars loose in the garage, everything spilled!”

Embarrassed, Sebastian realized how much work hides in a single jar of honey. He learned that one bee produces only about 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in its entire life. That accident became a turning pointm, a mix of guilt and curiosity that sparked an idea: could technology help humans understand bees better?

Although he wasn’t a beekeeper yet, he enrolled in the Vocational Beekeeping School in Sulejów and began designing a device that would let hives “speak” through data. With a small group of friends, he built the first prototype — rough but full of promise. By 2019, the project evolved into Intelligent Hives Sp. z o.o.

Despite setbacks — the COVID-19 pandemic, chip shortages, lack of funding, the team persisted, supported by beekeepers who believed in the mission. Their flagship system, BeeHUB, now monitors temperature, weight, humidity, and sound inside hives, turning data into a new language between humans and bees.

“That spilled honey,” Sebastian says, “became the sweetest mistake of my life.”