At four years old, Mikaila Ulmer was not thinking about entrepreneurship, retail distribution or building a national brand. She was simply afraid of bees. Two stings in one week in 2009 left her frightened enough that her parents encouraged her to learn more about the insects instead of avoiding them. What she discovered turned a childhood fear into the idea that would eventually become Me & the Bees Lemonade.
The research gave Ulmer a different way to look at what had frightened her. She learned that bees play an essential role in pollinating many of the crops people depend on for food, while threats such as habitat loss, pesticides, disease and parasites can put pressure on pollinator populations. The lesson did not make bees any less intimidating overnight, but it gave her a reason to pay attention to them. Soon, that curiosity became connected to something much more familiar: her great-grandmother's lemonade recipe.
