Mikaila Ulmer

She built a multimillion-dollar beverage company before she could drive a car.

Mikaila Ulmer was four years old when life handed her lemons… and stingers.

Two bees stung her in the same week.

At the library, she learned bees were in crisis.

Colony collapse disorder was wiping out hives, threatening the food supply.

Without bees, much of the food we eat (fruits, vegetables, nuts) would disappear.

She decided she wouldn’t just feel sorry for them. She’d save them.

A week later, her great-grandmother Helen’s 1940s cookbook landed in her hands.

Inside was a flaxseed lemonade recipe.

Mikaila swapped sugar for local honey, both to help the bees and to make a healthier drink, and started selling it from a folding table outside her house.

Her promise: 10% of profits would go to bee conservation.

It worked.

Customers loved it. Not just for the taste, but for the mission.

Soon a local pizza shop asked her to bottle it.

She said yes… and BeeSweet Lemonade was born.

From there, things escalated.

Whole Foods gave her a distribution deal.

The Austin Black Chamber of Commerce encouraged her to pitch on Shark Tank.

In 2015, at just nine years old, she stood in front of the Sharks with her father and landed a $60,000 investment from Daymond John.

That same year, she poured lemonade at the White House Easter Egg Roll and met President Barack Obama, who later called her “an amazing young lady.”

In 2016, she was introducing Obama on stage at the United State of Women Summit.

By 2017, she was selling 500,000 bottles a year in 500 stores.

That year, a consortium of 10 NFL players invested $800,000 into the company.

She launched her nonprofit, the Healthy Hive Foundation, dedicated to education, research, and protection of bees.

When another company claimed rights to her original name, she pivoted, renaming the brand Me & the Bees Lemonade.

Today, her award-winning, honey-sweetened flax lemonades come in five flavors: Classic, Black Cherry, Very Berry, Passionfruit, and Prickly Pear.

They’re sold in over 1,500 stores, including Whole Foods, Target, World Market, The Fresh Market, Kroger, H-E-B, and Vitamin Cottage Natural Grocers.

The product is also served in restaurants, food trucks, and via national foodservice distributors in all 50 states.

She’s refused offers to cut costs by adding preservatives, choosing instead to keep her drinks all-natural.

No high-fructose corn syrup, no artificial flavors, no GMOs.

She’s expanded into beeswax lip balms.

She’s switched from glass bottles to fully recyclable cans, unlocking opportunities in stadiums, schools, and festivals.

In 2020, Mikaila published “Bee Fearless: Dream Like a Kid” with Penguin Random House while still in high school.

Now a rising senior at Emory University, she’s studying economics and quantitative sciences, writing about social enterprise and the racial wealth gap.