How did a 10-year old, Mikaila Ulmer of Sugar Land, TX, beat out the conglomerate giants such as Kraft, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Procter & Gamble to land coveted shelf space and a million dollar contract with Whole Foods?
Her precocious response? “I don’t know? Do they make theirs with love?”
Her company, Bee Sweet Lemonade, is the beginning of a Lemonade empire in which the idea came from when she was stung by bees when she was just 4 years old — twice in one week.
“After that I would freak out about the bees — like overreact — and then my parents wanted me to do some research so I would be less afraid. And doing that research I found out how incredibly important pollinators they are, and that they were dying,” Mikaila said. “And I decided to create a product that helped save the bees.”
She dug up an old lemonade recipe from her great-grandmother’s cookbook, and added honey — her way of calling attention to the plight of honeybees.
Beekeepers have reported losing 42 percent of their colonies in the past year. That’s the second highest annual loss on record.
Scientists suspect pesticides may be behind the decline, which could threaten our food supply, since bees pollinate crops.
“The pesticides either get into their brain and they can’t find their way back to the hive, or they have the pollen with the pesticides and they feed it to the hive and then the whole hive dies,” Mikaila said.
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