Cornell Team Wins Innovation Award for Honey-Based Functional Shots
Hive Homies’ “Beevive” concept earns top honors at Cornell’s Food Hackathon for creative use of honey in performance and wellness applications
Team Hive Homies took home the award for Most Innovative Use of Honey at the third annual Cornell Food Hackathon at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. Their winning concept, Beevive, is a line of functional beverage shots that uses honey as natural delivery system for these functional benefits:
● Bee Hot: Hot honey with capsaicin for muscle recovery
● Bee Bright: Honey with ginger and citrus for immunity and alertness
● Bee Awake: Honey with green tea for endurance and alertness
The Cornell Food Hackathon, co-sponsored by the National Honey Board, brought together more than 150 students who had 36 hours to form teams and develop a food innovation concept. This year’s honey innovation challenge tasked students with developing the next buzzworthy honey product by innovating in flavor infusions, packaging/formats, functional benefits or cultural applications.
In addition to Team Hive Homies, three other honey challenge teams made it to the final round of judging:
● Team Level Bee: Developed a natural honey energy chew with a liquid center made with honey.
● Team Chew Crew: Created a single-serve honey pod encapsulated by an edible film that reduced food and packaging waste, as well as improved convenience.
● Team Red 40: Developed a flaked, finishing honey designed to top everything from frozen desserts to popcorn.
“This year’s Cornell Food Hackathon delivered some of the most innovative honey products we’ve seen in our three years of sponsoring the event,” Catherine Barry, vice president of marketing for the National Honey Board, said. “We encouraged several of the teams to keep moving forward with their ideas, as we see them as potential market changers in the honey and food industries.”
Co-led by the Cornell Institute for Food Systems and Entrepreneurship at Cornell, the Cornell Food Hackathon brings together Cornell’s expertise in food innovation and venture creation to support student entrepreneurship and early-stage solution development in food systems.
The National Honey Board (NHB) is an industry-funded agriculture promotion group that works to educate consumers about the benefits and uses for honey and honey products through research, marketing and promotional programs. The Board’s work, funded by an assessment on domestic and imported honey, is designed to increase the awareness and usage of honey by consumers, the foodservice industry and food manufacturers. The 10-member Board, appointed by the US Secretary of Agriculture, represents producers (beekeepers), packers, importers and a marketing cooperative.
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