At first glance, Project Hive looks like a straightforward dog brand with a cute visual gimmick: bright yellow toys shaped like honeycomb, chews and treats carrying a whisper of honey. Spend a minute on it, though, and the priorities flip. This is really a bee-conservation project that happens to fund itself by selling excellent dog gear. Dogs and honeybees even share the company’s homepage, and that pairing is the whole thesis.
Why bees, from a dog company
Melissa Rappaport Schifman and Jim, her husband, launched Project Hive in 2021 with a specific pitch to climate-conscious dog owners: USA-made, BPA-free toys and vegetarian, honey-kissed treats, with proceeds routed into planting wildflower habitat for pollinators. The through-line, in Schifman’s telling, is that saving bees is an unusually approachable way into a much larger sustainability problem, and one we all have a direct stake in.
The stakes are not abstract. She points to a widely cited 2008 declaration from the Earthwatch Institute that crowned bees the planet’s single most important species, on the logic that they pollinate roughly a third of what we eat. The reasons bee numbers are falling, industrial monoculture farming, heavy pesticide and herbicide use, and climate change, are the same forces straining the broader ecosystem. And the fix Project Hive funds, acres of healthy wildflower habitat, doesn’t just help bees; it supports the whole web of species that shares that ground with our pets and us.
The bee facts that reframe your grocery list
Schifman is quick to admit that the deeper she gets, the more she realizes how much there is to learn, but a few figures reliably stop people. Bees have a hand in roughly one bite in three of what we eat. Around 250,000 species of flowering plants depend on them, contributing to everything from medicines to cotton clothing. Some crops are almost entirely at their mercy: almonds rely on honeybees for essentially all of their pollination, while pumpkins lean more on wild bees. And the honeybee has plenty of company, more than 4,000 native bee species in the U.S. alone, each pulling weight in our food security.
What you can actually do (yard or no yard)
The company’s advice for owners who want to help is refreshingly doable. If you have a yard, convert part of it to native and adaptive wildflowers, which Schifman notes are far lower-maintenance than a turf lawn that constantly demands mowing, watering, and fertilizing. Her personal favorites are black-eyed Susans (rudbeckia) and purple coneflowers (echinacea), and the Pollinator Partnership publishes free planting guides tailored to your zip code.
No yard? The work moves to your wallet and attention. Project Hive backs the Bee & Butterfly Habitat Fund directly, and points to other strong pollinator nonprofits worth supporting, including the Pollinator Partnership, the Xerces Society, and The Nature Conservancy.
The toys themselves
The gear is not an afterthought. The bright, floatable, recyclable toys are built to pair with the treats: fans of the brand tend to reach for the Hive Fetch Stick and the smaller Hive Chew Toy, with the Hive Chew Sticks sized to tuck snugly into a toy’s cavity for interactive play, and the Hive Disc getting singled out as a better flier than most frisbees. The treats are vegetarian and grain-free, made in the U.S. with a touch of honey and without artificial colors or flavors. (There is a small irony worth savoring: the founders are, by their own cheerful admission, a two-cat household, and test the toys on their team’s dogs.)
What’s new since this was written
Here is the update, and it is a good one. When this brand first talked up its ambitions, becoming a Certified B Corporation was still a goal on the horizon. It has since crossed that line, earning B Corp certification with a strong impact score and going on to recertify and publish an annual impact report, which means an independent body has now vetted the mission this company is built on rather than taking its word for it. In the same stretch it expanded the product line (including a scent-focused collection of toys) and moved to Non-GMO Project Verified ingredients. The bee math hasn’t changed, but the credentials behind the promise have gotten a lot more solid.
Project Hive’s bundles and toys are sold through the brand’s own site and pet retailers like Chewy; a direct Amazon option was not confirmed at publication.
