Meet Mitch!

Guess what we have? If you said “Product Engineer,” you’re the bees’ knees. (Sorry.)

The process of picking an engineer was incredibly daunting, since this isn’t our field of expertise. How do you formulate interview questions when you just learned the job exists? But we did it, and narrowed the selection down to two candidates, both very skilled. In the end it was Mitch Muller’s agile, flexible mind and great proposal that won us over. He knew the answers to questions we didn’t even know we needed to ask. 

Mitch has degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Engineering, and has been building since he was just a kid. In his online profile he says he likes to ask the hard questions and truly understand the problem the product is trying to solve, and it’s that kind of focus and natural curiosity that makes him an absolutely perfect fit for our team.

So welcome our Product Engineer, Mitch! We could not be more excited to have him. He’ll be responsible for design, testing, and fabrication of our prototype. 

His expertise is our missing piece.

His knowledge fills a gap and means we are self-sufficient in terms of ideation and creation. We can tinker and test and perfect the specs. This is huge.

Not having this capability meant that we were stuck. And while we are nothing if not positive, there was a moment there we wondered if we’d be able to move forward. The process of creating a physical product is so different than creating a piece of software, and every single day is a lightning moment of new learning.

Don’t think there’s no anxiety left. This is a huge moment for us, and beginning to create a real, tangible product is like leaping off the cliff. In a good way. As excited as we are to begin the process of iterating on design ideas, we’re nervous. Can we build this sustainably? Can we make a one-way bee gate? How do we store the oil? How do we get that oil onto the bees? And then there’s the whole thing of testing this on actual honey bees. But enough worry for now.

Today we celebrate. 

We’ll share sketches when he has them...we cannot wait for what’s to come.