Bee Fearless: Dream Like a Kid

When I was four and a half years old, I got my first bee sting. Ouch! I don’t know if you’ve been stung by a bee, but it hurts. My parents put a little aloe on it, and the pain eventually went away. Then, a week later, I got stung again! I didn’t know what was going on, but I decided I was never going outside again, because I was afraid if I did, I’d get stung by another bee. My parents said, “You can’t stay inside forever.” Instead of fearing the bees, my parents encouraged me to find out more about them and why they sting. I learned that bees sting when they’re scared, and they’re trying to protect themselves against big creatures like four-year-old girls. But I learned something else–more than just about beestings. The bees were in trouble: They were disappearing at an alarming rate, and they needed our help. I didn’t quite understand the whole story at that age, but I decided to set up a lemonade stand outside my house to raise money to protect the bees. I got a little creative and decided to sweeten my lemonade with a little honey, since bees make honey.

Within a few years, I was bottling my lemonade and selling it in a few stores in Austin, Texas, where I live. A few more years later, my lemonade stand, along with my mission to save bees, had grown into a multimillion dollar social enterprise. Now my lemonade is available nationwide in over 1,500 stores. Since starting my company in 2009, I’ve sold over 1.2 million bottles of lemonade. In that time, I have saved an estimated 800,000 bees, with a target of saving an additional 400,000 bees by the end of 2020. That’s a lot of happy bees!