Raina Jain

The naming citation of minor planet 34730 Rainajain, as held in the Small-Body Database of NASANASAThe National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the U.S. federal agency responsible for the civilian space program, aeronautics research and space science. Established by law in 1958 and headquartered in Washington, D.C., it has run programs including Mercury, the Apollo Moon landings, the Space Shuttle, the International Space Station and Artemis.Open the full entry’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, states that she was born in 2002. A 2025 profile in the Greenwich Free Press says that she was born in New JerseyNew JerseyNew Jersey is a state in the eastern United States on the Atlantic Ocean, bordered by New York State, Delaware, and Pennsylvania, with the Hudson River forming its northeastern boundary and the Delaware River its western boundary; its capital is Trenton and its largest city is Newark. One of the original 13 colonies, it became the third state to ratify the U.S. Constitution on December 18, 1787, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 9,288,994.Open the full entry and moved to Greenwich, ConnecticutConnecticutConnecticut is a U.S. state in the New England region. Its capital is Hartford and its largest city is Bridgeport (2010 census). It entered the Union on January 9, 1788, as the 5th state, and had a population of 3,605,944 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry, when she was in second grade, joining a predominantly white school where she often felt that she did not belong.⁠[1][2]

Her parents are first-generation immigrants from India who settled in Connecticut. CNNCNNCNN (Cable News Network) is an Atlanta-based news organization founded by Ted Turner on June 1, 1980, as the world’s first 24-hour television news channel. It has been owned in turn by Turner Broadcasting System, Time Warner, AT&T and Warner Bros. Discovery, became part of Skydance Corporation along with Warner Bros. Discovery in October 2026, and is one of the five networks that rotate in the White House television pool.Open the full entry wrote in 2022 that her parents taught her to value all life, even small creatures such as ants, which she would carry outside rather than harm; the Greenwich Free Press article likewise says that her parents taught her to return insects gently outdoors rather than kill them.⁠[3][2]

The Greenwich Free Press article says that her parents had come from humble beginnings and moved to the United States for a better future and valued hard work and sacrifice, and that she has siblings, among them an older sister who was a role model to her. It adds that her family has a lineage of strong women, which her parents describe with the words “their ceiling is her floor.”⁠[2]

An article by Jody Bell, editor in chief of Girls With Impact, says that she was raised in Connecticut by immigrant parents, to whom she credits her unshakeable mindset, and that she once overheard her father telling family friends that the family had started with nothing and built a platform for its children: “we’ve come from nothing and we have worked so hard to get here.” The article says that these words have guided her life.⁠[4]

Looking back on her early schooling in the Greenwich Free Press article, she says: “I was always an average kid,” and “I was never a naturally gifted student.”⁠[2]

At Greenwich High School she took part in the independent science research program led by the science teacher Andrew Bramante, whom she credits for her early success. Accounts differ on when she began: the 2025 Greenwich Free Press article says that her science research started when she was a sophomore, while MediaPost writes that she joined the school’s science program in her junior year.⁠[2][5][6]

CNN writes that in 2018 she visited an apiary, saw piles of dead bees and set out to find the cause, and that, encouraged by a high school science teacher, she began working on a solution to Varroa mite infestations in her junior year. The Greenwich Free Press and Save the Sound both place the bee farm in northern Connecticut. The founder page on Queen Bee’s website says that she started keeping bees in high school and, after seeing piles of dead bees at a local apiary, spent her junior year inventing HiveGuard.⁠[3][2][7][8]

Kevin Anderton, a ForbesForbesForbes is an American business media brand that began with Forbes magazine, founded by B.C. Forbes in 1917. It is known for rankings such as the Forbes 400, the World’s Billionaires list and 30 Under 30, and operates Forbes.com, ForbesLive events and licensed editions in 81 countries. Since 2014 a majority stake has been held by the Hong Kong investment group Integrated Whale Media; a 2021 plan to list on the New York Stock Exchange through a special purpose acquisition company was terminated in 2022. It is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey.Open the full entry contributor, wrote in 2020 that she met Samuel Ramsey, who ran a honey bee lab at the University of MarylandUniversity of Maryland, College ParkThe University of Maryland, College Park is a university in College Park, Maryland, United States, whose forerunner was the Maryland Agricultural College.Open the full entry, while competing at the Junior Science and Humanities Symposium (JSHS) in May 2018, and invited him to her lab a couple of months later. UConn Today and UConn Magazine write that she learned from a lecture by Samuel Ramsey (spelled Ramsay in both) at a science fair that the Varroa destructor mite contributes to the die-off of honeybees, after which she contacted him and read research papers on honeybees.⁠[9][10][11]

She recalls in UConn Magazine: “That’s when I decided to take it into my own hands and try to think of a tangible solution to that problem.” In UConn Today she says: “To see all these bees dying for no fault of their own, I thought that was just not right.”⁠[11][10]

In a first-person article in the beekeeping magazine Bee Culture she writes that she was a finalist at the 2018 National Junior Science and Humanities Symposium; the list of awards on Queen Bee’s website includes first place as a poster presenter at the 2018 National JSHS.⁠[12][8]

The Girls With Impact article says that she discovered the organization’s online business and leadership program for girls aged 14 to 24 at the age of 16 and found that it complemented her driven, imaginative approach.⁠[4]

The press release on the awards of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (Intel ISEF) 2018, issued by Society for Science in Pittsburgh on May 18, 2018, lists Raina Jain of Greenwich, Connecticut, as the Best of Category winner in Environmental Engineering, with a $5,000 prize in addition to a $3,000 first-place award. The release says that nearly 1,800 young scientists from 420 affiliate fairs in 81 countries, regions and territories took part and that about 600 finalists received awards.⁠[13]

The naming citation of minor planet 34730 Rainajain likewise states that she was awarded best of category and first place at the 2018 Intel ISEF for her environmental engineering project, and that she attended Greenwich High School in Greenwich, Connecticut. Queen Bee’s website, the Easton Courier and Girls With Impact also mention her first place and Best of Category at Intel ISEF.⁠[1][8][14][4]

In March 2019 she and her Greenwich High School schoolmate Hiba Hussain were named finalists for the 15th annual Women of Innovation Awards of the Connecticut Technology Council; the ceremony was scheduled for March 27 in Southington.⁠[15]

The Greenwich Free Press article says that in her first science research class at Greenwich High School she created two devices, one detecting arsenic contamination in water and one eliminating Varroa mite infestations in honeybee hives; having taken them from concept to finished design, she entered them in various science fairs, where they received considerable recognition, and she planned to keep implementing both devices and to study the sciences in more depth.⁠[15]

On May 2, 2019 a U.S. provisional patent application (No. 62/842,205) naming her and Andrew Bramante as inventors was filed for the invention later patented as the “Miticidal beehive entranceway.”⁠[16]

At Intel ISEF 2019 in Phoenix, ArizonaArizonaArizona is a state in the southwestern United States; its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona was admitted to the Union on February 14, 1912, as the 48th state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 7,151,502.Open the full entry, her project “Control of Varroa destructor Infestation with a Dual-Function, Thymol-Emitting Honey Bee Hive Entranceway” received a Second Award of $1,500 in Animal Sciences. The project’s abstract page also lists the Patent and Trademark Office Society Top Award of $1,000, together with an American flag and a framed copy of the first U.S. patent; Queen Bee’s website lists it as first place from the Patent and Trademark Office Society in 2019.⁠[17][18][8]

The project abstract says that she designed a 3D-printed hive entranceway coated with a mixture of thymol and Hydromed-D, which releases thymol onto bees as they pass through and gaseous thymol into the hive, and that the bees showed no aversion to it. Under normal bee behavior as much as 28 µg of thymol was transferred to each bee per day by contact; with a four-day exponential decay, bees reached the Varroa LC50 for thymol (56 µg) four days after installation, and headspace analysis of a hive showed about 5.44 µg of thymol per liter. The abstract adds that the entranceway’s release rate exceeds that of the most widely used thymol varroacide and is temperature-independent across the practical range of use, 2°C to 45°C, and that modeling suggests it lasts about one month and can be recharged without disturbing the hive.⁠[18]

Queen Bee’s website further lists second place as an oral presenter at the National JSHS and first place at the Connecticut JSHS, both in 2019.⁠[8]

On June 18 of that year a Greenwich Free Press article on Andy Bramante’s independent science research program described her project as a dual-function, thymol-emitting beehive entrance: as bees pass through its holes, the rubbing action removes attached Varroa mites and the thymol kills them. The article cited Sam Ramsey’s research and stated that Varroa mites are responsible for Colony Collapse Disorder.⁠[5]

CNN writes that she founded the supplement company Queen Bee in 2020, selling health drinks containing honey and royal jelly, and that for every bottle sold a pollinator tree is planted through Trees for the Future, a nonprofit that works with farming families in sub-Saharan Africa.⁠[3]

Event notices in the Easton Courier and on Patch in 2022 say that she founded Queen Bee, a line of wellness supplements made with honeybee byproducts, after her lab closed during the Covid pandemic and HiveGuard was paused. The Girls With Impact article says that the pandemic shut down her lab and limited the supply of testing materials, forcing her to pause HiveGuard.⁠[14][19][4]

MediaPost writes that she kept a beehive in her backyard to test her device and that, when it died, she began looking for ginger shots like the elixir her mother made; with Covid-19 disrupting the development of HiveGuard, she pivoted to consumer packaged goods with Queen Bee.⁠[6]

Save the Sound wrote in 2021 that before the pandemic she tested the device in a research lab and then gave it to beekeepers in North America, Europe and New Zealand in exchange for hive data, and that because of Covid-19 she pivoted to a consumer product, a two-ounce health shot made with honeybee products, with a pollinator plant planted for each bottle sold.⁠[7]

As a Greenwich High School senior she was one of four students from the school named Regeneron Science Talent Search 2020 scholars, with a project titled “Control of Varroa destructor Infestation with a Dual-Function Thymol Emitting Honey Bee Hive Entranceway”; each scholar received $2,000. Their research advisor, Andrew Bramante, said of the four: “These students are passionate, hardworking and deserving of this recognition.”⁠[20]

On January 22, 2020 Society for Science announced the 40 finalists chosen from 1,993 entrants; she was on the list, after the ranked top ten. The announcement said that each finalist would receive at least $25,000 and that the finalists would travel to Washington, D.C., from March 5 to 11, 2020, display their projects to the public on March 8 and learn the top ten at a gala at the National Building Museum on March 10.⁠[21][22]

The Forbes contributor’s article says that as a top-40 finalist in the Regeneron Science Talent Search she won a $25,000 prize; the Easton Courier writes that she was one of 40 students selected nationally for the 2020 Regeneron Science Talent Search.⁠[9][14]

She wrote about the competition in Bee Culture, explaining that she applied after a friend had become a semifinalist; the article describes her device as a dual-function hive entranceway that releases thymol embedded in a gel called hydromed and states that she has obtained a U.S. patent.⁠[12]

On April 30, 2020 a U.S. patent application (No. 16/862,824) naming Andrew Bramante and Raina Jain as inventors was filed, claiming priority from the provisional application of May 2, 2019; it was published on December 17, 2020 as US20200390069A1.⁠[16]

She graduated from Greenwich High School in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic. On August 11, 2020 Kevin Anderton, a Forbes contributor described as a Kansas City-based science reporter and graphic artist, published the infographic article “A 17-Year-Old From Connecticut Is Saving Honey Bees” about the 17-year-old from Greenwich, Connecticut, and her hive entranceway; it says that she had recently graduated from Greenwich High School and was set to attend the University of ConnecticutUniversity of ConnecticutThe University of Connecticut (UConn) is Connecticut’s public research university and the state’s flagship public university, with its main campus at Storrs. It grew out of the Storrs Agricultural School, established in 1881 when the Connecticut General Assembly accepted a gift from the brothers Charles and Augustus Storrs, has borne its present name since 1939, and is a land-grant, sea-grant and Space Grant institution.Open the full entry.⁠[2][9]

The article says that foraging bees pass through the entranceway about 40 times a day and that in lab testing the Varroa mite population dropped by 70% after three weeks. For real-world testing she enlisted volunteer beekeepers in CaliforniaCaliforniaCalifornia is a U.S. state on the Pacific coast; its capital is Sacramento and its largest city is Los Angeles. California was admitted to the Union on September 9, 1850, as the 31st state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 39,538,223, the largest of any state.Open the full entry, Connecticut, FloridaFloridaFlorida is a U.S. state occupying mainly the Florida peninsula, with its capital at Tallahassee; its most populous city is Jacksonville. It entered the Union on March 3, 1845, as the 27th state, and had a population of 21,538,187 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry, Georgia, NevadaNevadaNevada is a state in the western United States bordered by Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, and California; its capital is Carson City. It was admitted to the Union on October 31, 1864, as the 36th state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 3,104,614.Open the full entry and Rhode IslandRhode IslandRhode Island (officially the State of Rhode Island) is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Ocean; its capital and largest city is Providence. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on May 29, 1790, the last of the original 13 to do so. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 1,097,379.Open the full entry. Finding that thymol fell off the bees because of their flight speed and quick turns, she measured the loss with a drone and thymol samples; the thymol level on foraging bees stayed just below 0.5 micrograms, enough to kill mites without harming the bees, and experiments in a lab hive showed that the thymol gas did not harm larvae, bees, honey or beeswax, with no significant absorption found in honey or wax.⁠[9]

The article says that she has patented her work and hopes to bring it to market after more testing, that Randy Oliver, an entomologist in California who cares for more than 30,000 hives, planned to test the invention, and that her lab had temporarily closed because of the Covid-19 pandemic. She is quoted as saying: “it can be easy to disregard creatures as small as bees, but the truth is we are dependent on them.”⁠[9]

UConn Today describes her as a first-year student at the University of Connecticut, studying remotely, who had not yet chosen a major but was leaning toward economics or engineering with a minor in computer science; she was in the inaugural cohort of Freshman Female Founders, a pilot program of the university’s Peter J. Werth Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation that gives first-year women mentorship, networking and resources.⁠[10]

The article says that HiveGuard was in its final testing stage, that she had recently deployed 100 units to beekeepers in California, Florida and North CarolinaNorth CarolinaNorth Carolina is a state in the South Atlantic region of the United States; its capital is Raleigh and its largest city is Charlotte. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on November 21, 1789, becoming the 12th state, and its population in the 2020 census was 10,439,388.Open the full entry, and that 4,000 devices were reserved for when full-scale production began after the current round of testing.⁠[10][11]

In the article she encourages young people: “If you’re scared, if you don’t know how to start, just start,” and “These dreams that you have as a kid, don’t let anybody talk you out of it.”⁠[10]

UConn Magazine writes that her Queen Bee immune-support supplement won the University of Connecticut School of Business’s Innovation Quest (iQ) competition and its $15,000 grand prize, which she planned to use to sign with a distributor and launch retail sales. UConn Today wrote in the fall of 2021 that she had won the competition the previous semester; MediaPost also mentions the $15,000 she received from it.⁠[11][23][6]

The same UConn Today article says that that summer she completed the Summer Fellowship startup bootcamp sponsored by the School of Business’s Connecticut Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation (CCEI), gaining advice from expert mentors in the consumer products industry, among them that “people connect with people, not things.”⁠[23]

On June 29, 2021 Save the Sound published an article by Alex Rodriguez on her as a first-year student at the University of Connecticut (spelling her surname “Jan” in the subtitle and photo caption). It says that she founded HiveGuard after witnessing a honeybee colony collapse and researching Varroa mites, that the original device is a beehive entryway coated with thymol that kills Varroa mites as bees pass through it, and that she has patented the design.⁠[7]

In the article she says that she is allergic to honeybees, names Samuel Ramsey and Andrew Oliver as people she has worked with, and credits support from David Noble, director of the Peter J. Werth Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and from a University of Connecticut summer innovation program. She says: “I hope that one day the bees won’t need to be saved anymore.”⁠[7]

A UConn Today article of September 2021 calls her a sophomore engineering major (class of 2024). It says that in the first week of classes she sold Queen Bee at the grand opening of Whole Foods Market’s new store in Avon, Connecticut; the product, an all-natural beverage combining royal jelly from beehives with ginger and turmeric, was stocked in the grab-and-go and refrigerated produce sections. She said: “I absolutely couldn’t pass it by.”⁠[23]

The article says that she spent months perfecting the recipe, that the product launched online and in retail and sold slowly at first until digital ad campaigns and postcard advertising lifted sales, that three new products were in development, and that it was made at a co-packing facility about four hours away.⁠[23]

Queen Bee was one of five startups selected for that fall’s Wolff New Venture Competition, described as the University of Connecticut’s top startup competition, which was to be held on Monday, October 25, with a grand prize of $20,000.⁠[23]

UConn Magazine published “Bee Good” by Claire Hall and Jaclyn Severance, describing her as an engineering student (class of 2024) and an inaugural member of Freshman Female Founders and presenting HiveGuard and Queen Bee. It says that Queen Bee is made from honey and propolis (sometimes called “bee glue”) mixed with ginger and turmeric, that she developed it after finding no similar product on the market, and that she pledged to plant a pollinator tree for every bottle sold.⁠[11]

In the article she says that she felt an instant energy and became more focused after drinking it. She also says that she cares about women in STEM making their voices heard, recalling that at 17 she was the only woman of color on long conference calls and gradually forced herself to speak up. David Noble, director of the Werth Institute, calls her “one in a million” and says that she has a drive that cannot be taught.⁠[11]

On January 6, 2022 the Thiel Foundation announced a new class of the Thiel Fellowship, and she was on the list. The announcement gave her age as 19 and her location as Riverside, Connecticut, and described her project, QueenBee, as one that “sustainably creates wellness products utilizing honeybee byproducts.” It said that the class had 23 members, that each receives $100,000 over the two-year program, and that the only requirement is to pause college enrollment and focus on their technology or company.⁠[24]

In her Bee Culture article she likewise writes that she lived in Riverside, Connecticut, and attended Greenwich High School. Girls With Impact says that she received $100,000 in funding as a Thiel Fellow, and Queen Bee’s website and the Greenwich Free Press also mention her Thiel Fellowship.⁠[12][4][8][2]

On how she left university: the 2025 Greenwich Free Press article says that she received a full-ride scholarship to the University of Connecticut and dropped out after two weeks to pursue entrepreneurship, and the founder page on Queen Bee’s website says that she left two weeks in to accept a Thiel Fellowship and build full time. UConn Today and UConn Magazine, writing in 2021, described her successively as a first-year student and as a sophomore engineering student (class of 2024) there.⁠[2][8][10][23]

On April 12, 2022 U.S. Patent 11,297,805 B2, “Miticidal beehive entranceway,” was granted to the inventors Andrew Bramante and Raina Jain, with the assignee recorded as individual and 13 claims. It describes a beehive entranceway made of a solid substrate coated with a thymol-containing composition, whose holes make bees walk through and contact the coating so that attached mites are exposed to a killing dose without injuring the bees; some embodiments add agitating bristles, which may also be coated with thymol, to dislodge the mites.⁠[16]

At 7:30 p.m. on May 24, 2022 Connecticut’s Back Yard Beekeepers Association presented her as its speaker at the Norfield Congregational Church in Weston, with attendance also possible via Zoom. The notice on Patch describes the association as having more than 250 members and as one of the largest regional beekeeping clubs in the United States.⁠[14][19]

Both notices say that Queen Bee had recently launched at Whole Foods Market and was expanding to other national retailers, and they list her selection for the 2020 Regeneron Science Talent Search, her first place and Best of Category at Intel ISEF, the minor planet named for her by MITMassachusetts Institute of TechnologyThe Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. It received its charter from Massachusetts in 1861, admitted its first students in 1865 and moved from Boston to its present campus in 1916. As of October 2025 it had 11,816 students, and it counts 106 Nobel laureates among members of its community.Open the full entry Lincoln Laboratory, and the coverage of her honeybee work in Forbes and Bee Culture.⁠[14][19]

On November 17, 2022 CNN published “How an innovative hive entrance could help save bees,” describing her as a 20-year-old social entrepreneur dedicated to saving pollinators, especially honeybees. It says that HiveGuard is a 3D-printed hive entranceway coated with thymol, a non-toxic, plant-based pesticide, which rubs off onto the bees in a concentration that kills Varroa mites without harming them; that its development involved much trial and error; that about 2,000 beekeepers had beta-tested it since March 2021; that her data showed a 70% decline in Varroa infestations three weeks after installation, with no side effects having come to light; and that she planned an official release later that year. The article includes an electron microscope photo of a Varroa mite taken by her.⁠[3]

She says in the article: “Bees are the reason we’re all here today,” calling them the basis of agriculture and food production; her biggest hope for the environment is “to restore it back to balance, and be in harmony with nature,” and she believes that humans can learn teamwork and sacrifice for the common good from honeybee colonies. The article also quotes Samuel Ramsey, an entomology professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, attributing honeybee declines to parasites, pesticides and poor nutrition.⁠[3]

On March 18, 2025 the Greenwich Free Press published a profile of her, then 22, by the Greenwich High School student Kaevel Sandhu. It says that she was accepted to appear on the television show Shark Tank where her presentation earned her a deal with Mark CubanMark CubanMark Cuban is an American entrepreneur and investor whose early work in computer systems and internet audio and video expanded into sports, film, venture investment and pharmaceuticals. He was the Dallas Mavericks’ controlling owner and a longstanding investor on Shark Tank, and co-founded Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company.Open the full entry, and that Queen Bee buys honeybee byproducts from beekeepers and sells them to retailers such as Whole Foods, distributing to 4,000 retailers nationwide. The founder page on Queen Bee’s website likewise calls her a “Shark Tank alum.”⁠[2][8]

The article says that she was fired from two jobs and dropped out of university, and that to get her products into stores she went to Whole Foods parking lots early in the morning to ask store managers for advice, facing many rejections. It adds that a new company of hers reached in four to five months the distribution that took Queen Bee more than four years.⁠[2]

In the article she advises high school students: “Try everything,” and “The point of high school isn’t to look good on paper—it’s to figure out what you love”; on entrepreneurship she says: “Society doesn’t care about your background—it cares about the value you create.”⁠[2]

As of November 2026 the founder page on Queen Bee’s website, under the name “Raina Singhvi Jain,” presents her as founder and chief executive of Queen Bee, inventor of HiveGuard and a Thiel Fellow, and as a founder, beekeeper and research scientist. It says that she co-founded Queen Bee with the NFLNFLThe NFL (National Football League) is a U.S. professional American football league of 32 clubs. Founded in 1920 as the APFA and renamed in 1922, it is organized into the AFC and NFC, with the season culminating in the Super Bowl.Open the full entry quarterback Tyrod TaylorTyrod TaylorTyrod Taylor is an NFL quarterback who, since entering the league in 2011, has played for eight teams, earning a Pro Bowl selection in 2015 as the Buffalo Bills’ starter and joining the Green Bay Packers in 2026; he also founded the Tyrod Taylor Foundation and is a co-founder of the wellness-drink brand Queen Bee.Open the full entry to bring raw honey and royal jelly into daily wellness, that she formulates every shot herself from ingredients sourced from small-scale beekeepers, and that Whole Foods was the first retailer and the brand is sold in more than 4,000 stores nationwide.⁠[8]

The website’s home page presents the co-founder Tyrod Taylor as an NFL quarterback of fifteen seasons who won Super Bowl XLVII with the Baltimore RavensBaltimore RavensThe Baltimore Ravens are an NFL professional American football team that began play in Baltimore in 1996. They play at M&T Bank Stadium. Named after Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven,” reflecting his connection with the city, the team won the Super Bowls concluding the 2000 and 2012 seasons.Open the full entry and was selected for the 2015 Pro Bowl. It lists three shots, Fire Cider, Ginger Turmeric (described as the bestseller) and Elderberry Hibiscus, from $36 for a nine-pack; a photo caption of the founders gives the location as New York.⁠[25]

She is allergic to honeybees. UConn Today writes that she found this out when she was stung on the foot while setting up an experimental hive at home, after which, she says, she could not walk for two weeks; CNN writes that a single sting on her foot kept her out of commission for weeks.⁠[10][3][7]

UConn Magazine and UConn Today write that her first prototype, a device based on a thymol gel, failed but that she kept going, and that she has kept the gel as a reminder that the company started with that first step: “I still have that gel with me today.”⁠[11][10]

UConn Today relays the claims on her website that the device is “temperature-independent, does not contaminate the honey” and needs no maintenance after a one-time installation; the HiveGuard website itself uses the same words. MediaPost describes HiveGuard as her company for the mite-control device.⁠[10][26][6]

On its adoption, the 2025 Greenwich Free Press article says that HiveGuard was patented and widely adopted by U.S. beekeepers; Girls With Impact writes that she spent about two years researching and testing before founding HiveGuard and that the invention went viral in the beekeeping community, with consumers lined up and waiting for the product; and the founder page on Queen Bee’s website says that it cut infestations by roughly 70% in testing and is used by more than 40% of beekeepers nationwide.⁠[2][4][8]

Accounts of the recipe’s origin differ: MediaPost writes that she was looking for ginger shots like the elixir her mother made; the Queen Bee page on Stacy’s FoundedByHer says that she mixed honeybee byproducts with ginger and turmeric following a recipe passed down from her grandmother; and Queen Bee’s home page says that her family drank a morning shot of raw honey, fresh ginger and turmeric for years before it became a bottle, adding that she kept her first hive before she could drive.⁠[6][27][25]

MediaPost writes that Queen Bee sells six-ingredient immune-support shots with ginger, turmeric and royal jelly, that it was starting to reach retail distribution, and that it donates to plant pollinator trees for each bottle sold. She explains there that bee eggs fed royal jelly become queens, that royal jelly is scarce and hard to source, and that a queen is four to five times larger than other bees, can live 20 to 25 times longer and can lay over 2,000 eggs a day.⁠[6]

She recalls in MediaPost that she first drove a box of shots to Whole Foods stores and asked managers to stock them, was directed to the buyers instead, and emailed buyers until one saw the product’s potential. She planned more flavors and powders made with honeybee byproducts for energy, sleep and stress, which she compares to Pixy Sticks that are “good for you” and dissolve in the mouth. Her advice to entrepreneurs in consumer packaged goods is that investors back the founder as well as the product and that storytelling helped her sell: “People resonate with people. They don’t resonate with things.”⁠[6]

The Queen Bee page on Stacy’s FoundedByHer describes the company as “a for-profit company with a non-profit mission mindset” whose product is a shelf-stable two-ounce ginger and turmeric shot with honeybee byproducts in a glass bottle; it says that a pollinator tree is planted for every bottle sold, with a goal of 100 million trees, and that she set up an experimental hive in her backyard.⁠[27]

Girls With Impact writes that Queen Bee sells ginger and turmeric shots with royal jelly, that part of the proceeds goes to Trees for the Future, which teaches agricultural skills and plants pollinator trees in sub-Saharan Africa, and that the product had been picked up by Whole Foods and was expected to be in hundreds of its stores within two to three months.⁠[4]

The “My Story” page of Queen Bee’s website says that its ingredients come from the hills of Peru, the fields of India and hives in the Brazilian rainforest, and that the company never overharvests its hives, keeps its apiaries away from harmful chemicals and feeds the bees only their own food. It states: “Queen Bee was founded with the mission to save the bees, and it’s going to end with the mission to save the bees.”⁠[28]

Minor planet 34730 Rainajain (2001 QO45) is named after her. The record in the Small-Body Database of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory shows that it was discovered on August 16, 2001 by LINEAR at Socorro and that its naming citation appeared in WGSBN Bulletin volume 2, number 13. Queen Bee’s website, the Easton Courier, Patch and Girls With Impact attribute the naming to MIT Lincoln Laboratory.⁠[1][8][14][19][4]

Other honors listed on the founder page of Queen Bee’s website include the Thomas Edison Award of the National Museum of Education (one of six nationally); an invitation to present to the Nobel PrizeNobel PrizeThe Nobel Prize is an international award established under the will of Alfred Nobel, comprising five prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace, awarded since 1901; its funds are managed by the Nobel Foundation, whose Board is based in Stockholm. The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, established in 1968, is not a Nobel Prize.Open the full entry laureate William D. Phillips; an invitation to the International GENIUS Olympiad, with first place for an environmental project; first place in Environmental Sciences (from the CT Association of Conservation and Inland Wetlands) and in Life Sciences (from The Jackson Laboratory) at the Connecticut Science & Engineering Fair; and Women in Science & Engineering awards from Lockheed MartinLockheed MartinLockheed Martin is an American aerospace and defense company whose main businesses include military aircraft, missile defense, rotary-wing aircraft and mission systems, and space systems.Open the full entry, UTC Aerospace, Collins Aerospace and the Petit Family Foundation.⁠[8]

The Easton Courier’s event notice of 2022 says that her interests are science, entrepreneurship and long-distance running and that she sees entrepreneurship and science as powerful ways to make an impact; her motto is: “Have big goals and even bigger dreams but remember to take one step at a time.”⁠[14][19]

In the Girls With Impact article she names self-doubt as the main obstacle for young entrepreneurs: “Me saying a few sentences won’t fight the main obstacle for young entrepreneurs – which is self doubt”; she also says: “No one is coming to save you, it’s just yourself and your motivation.”⁠[4]

Queen Bee: Official website: https://www.the-queenbee.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[25]

Thiel Fellowship: Official website: https://thielfellowship.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[29]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raina-jain257/ (opens in a new window).⁠[27][26]