About new

our story

Our buzz is building and the future is looking bee-utiful and bright! Watch the story of Me & the Bees:

ONCE UPON A TIME...

2009

2011

2014

2015

2016

2020

2024

In the beginning...

When Mikaila Ulmer was just four years old, she was stung by a bee...twice in one week!

Great-Granny’s Helen’s recipe

Mikaila made her first lemonade, inspired from her great-granny’s 1940 cookbook, with flaxseed from the recipe, but with honey for a bee-utiful twist on the classic drink.

First lemonade stand

Mikaila had her first lemonade stand at the Austin Lemonade Day and Acton Children’s Business Fair in Austin, Texas.

Pizza parlor challenge

With so much positive feedback and a challenge from our beloved pizza parlor, we would figure out how to bottle up the goodness and got our first order as BeeSweet Lemonade.

Into the major retailers

Soon after we got our first order, we got a deal from Whole Foods Market, then grew into many more stores nationwide, including World Market, Target, The Fresh Market and H-E-B.

It’s a deal!

Things really took off after we had the opportunity to pitch our product and plan of “attack” on Shark Tank, making a deal with Daymond John.

Healthy Hive Foundation

From our humble beginnings, we shared our profits with organizations helping to save the bees, and in 2016, we started our very own non-profit foundation.

New name, new brand

Because another company had our original name before us, we needed to change it. We embraced our mission, renaming and relaunching our company as Me & the Bees Lemonade.

When opportunity knocks

Part of growing a company is showing up for others (aka the fun stuff). Mikaila has done it all from introducing President Obama to teaching many classrooms of kids about saving the bees.

Still “Dreaming Like a Kid”

In 2020, Mikaila wrote a book so she could share our story even further, with the hope of inspiring the next generation of entrepreneurs and changemakers.

Happy Anniversary to us :)

We’re excited that for 15 years our award-winning lemonade company is still going strong. It’s been an incredible experience and we’re grateful to our “bee-lievers” who have supported us all these years.

New sustainable packaging

We’ve always taken pride in quality ingredients and flavors, but we’re also on a quest to be sustainable, improving our entire supply chain so we’re not only focusing on bees, but doing our part for the planet.

Our lemonade

Today, our award-winning, ready-to-drink Me & the Bees Lemonades are offered in five refreshing all-natural flavors at national, regional, and local retailers. Thanks to our partnerships with national food service distributors, they are available at many restaurants, food trailers, and natural food delivery companies. You can even buy them on our website or our retail partners’ sites.

We take pride in sourcing quality ingredients and creating the best flavor combinations to tempt our customers’ taste buds. We still adhere to Great-Granny Helen’s original base recipe, which uses flaxseed and contains omega-3 “good” fatty acids. We like to say our lemonades are “fun and functional.” Even though we have grown to sell millions of lemonades from coast to coast, we have maintained our quality standards. We make our products with all-natural ingredients, such as U.S. Grade-A honey. They are lower in sugar than other ready-to-drink beverages and contain no high-fructose corn syrup, artificial flavors, preservatives, or GMOs. Also, we are always on a quest to be sustainable and incrementally improve across our entire supply chain so that we not only focus on saving the bees but also on doing our part for our planet.

Our mission

Since our humble beginnings, we have donated a percentage of profits to local and international organizations fighting hard to save the bees. We even started a non-profit organization, Healthy Hive Foundation, dedicated to conservation through education, research, and protection and inspiring social entrepreneurship.

We are always on a quest to be sustainable and incrementally improve across our entire supply chain so that we’re not only doing our part to save the planet, but focusing on saving the bees.

Learn More

Our Founder & Hive

Mikaila Ulmer, Founder and CEO

Mikaila keeps the company’s mission of helping save and protect the bees as her focus. She’s been running the company since she started selling her lemonade in the front yard of her Austin, Texas home when she was only four. Now with product in all 50 states, she’s determined for Me & the Bees to become America’s favorite lemonade.

She loves sharing her story about her passion for being a social entrepreneur. Over the years, she’s dedicated a lot of time to speaking at events worldwide, leading workshops on saving the bees, and participating in social entrepreneurship panels. She wrote the bestselling book, Bee Fearless: Dream Like a Kid, so she could continue to share her story further with the hope of inspiring even more members of the next generation of changemakers.

It’s been an incredible journey full of fun, evolution, growth, and learning for the family-run business. And it’s all been possible because of all the “Bee-lievers” who support them and their mission. For that, they, and the bees, are forever grateful.