At the age of four, Mikaila Ulmer was stung by a bee. Within the same week, she was stung by another bee. At first she had a natural fear of bees, but after she did a little research on them, she grew to be fascinated by them.

Around the same time, she started getting into a couple children’s business competitions- the Acton Children’s Business Fair and Austin Lemonade Day. It was time to brainstorm. After thinking about how she could make a solid business idea, she meshed together the recent event of a being stung by a bee and the recipe for her great grandma’s homemade lemonade. Ironically, while she was brainstorming for ideas, her great grandma had sent her family a 1940s cookbook, in which there was a recipe for her flaxseed lemonade. Mikaila was struck with the thought of combining the lemonade while simultaneously helping the bees. She decided that she would add honey to the lemonade, instead of making it solely by sugar, water, and lemons. It was at this moment that Be Sweet Lemonade was born. The name was eventually changed to Me & the Bees Lemonade due to copyright issues. When Mikaila started her business, it was just a lemonade stand in front of her house, and it promised to donate a percentage of the profits to local and international organizations fighting hard to save the honeybees. This idea was especially genius due to the recent endangerment of bees in the 21st century.

This small business idea from her early years has turned into a business that grown by more than 500 percent from the company’s humble beginnings. This sounds like something that would happen in a movie. It’s surprising how well the business has done, and equally astonishing that she came up with the idea at 4 years old.