Morris, also a trained electrical engineer, runs BroodMinder with his wife and co-owner Laura Davis, project manager Steve Cantley and about five other employees who are responsible for quality control, marketing, design, writing and engineering.
He affectionately called Davis the “queen bee” and referred to himself as a “pilot drone” – another word for male bees.
The company also employs college students during the summer time, Davis said.
Prior to BroodMinder, Morris worked for Madison-based research and product development firm bb7 with Cantley. Morris brought decades of experience designing devices for scientists, medical professionals and consumers.
Rich Morris shows data from the beehive monitors on his phone.
At bb7, Morris and Cantley helped study populations of people with bone disease. It was an opportunity to identify problems and needs within these populations, and the result was new drugs and treatments, Cantley said.
He found that the principles of population analysis could also be applied to bees.
“If you don’t measure, you don’t learn,” said Morris.
Now BroodMinder sells most of its products online, but occasionally passers-by come into the store’s store to see the devices in person.
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