What We Do

Our Projects

TALKING BEES ROADSHOW

In September 2023 through June 2024, we’re teaming up with H-E-B to bring awareness of the environmental benefits that honey bees provide, as well as celebrate beekeepers, honey lovers and all blooming things. Certified Master Beekeeper Konrad Bouffard of Round Rock Honey will teach the Talking Bees Roadshow sessions in 20 greater Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin area public libraries.

No stranger to educating our community on all things bees, Bouffard has more than 20 years experience helping to reverse the steadily declining honey bee population.

Thanks to a grant from H-E-B’s Our Texas Our Future program, the Foundation will launch Bouffard’s traveling educational program in September, National Honey Month.

Ronald McDonald House Charities of Central Texas

Healthy Hive Foundation proudly supports an incredible cause serving families in Central Texas —  Ronald McDonald House Charities of Central Texas (RMHC CTX). Recently we donated 35 Bee Boxes, made in collaboration with Whole Kids Foundation, and received a beautiful tour of their building. Inspired by their mission to keep families close, as well as their core values of leading with compassion and celebrating diversity, Healthy Hive Foundation donated these boxes in the hopes to give families and children the space to learn and try new things while they look after loved ones. We hope these Bee Boxes will bring a smile to their faces to taste the sweet honey and see the beauty in our little pollinators. 

HELP BRING THE WONDER OF BEES TO A SCHOOL IN YOUR FAVORITE CITY PROJECT

In April of 2023, we teamed up with Me & the Bees Lemonade, Whole Kids Foundation, and The Bee Cause Project to donate educational materials and resources to ten schools around the United States. After reviewing over 250 nominations from 55 cities, the recipients are:

• Carthay School of Environmental Studies, Los Angeles, CA
• Jack Jordan Middle School, San Antonio, TX
• Discovery Academy of Lake Alfred, Lake Alfred, FL
• KIPP Ascend Primary School, Chicago, IL
• Herzog Academy, St. Louis, MO
• Watford City Middle School, Watford, ND
• Sycamore Elementary, Sugar Hill, GA
• Austin Achieve Public School, Austin, TX
• Windsor Elementary, Baltimore, MD
• PS174, Queens, NY

Sharing bee resources like education materials, webinars, stem projects, planting resources and bee-sweetened lemonade not only helps inspire youth, but catapults them into action to save our pollinators. This type of engagement would not be possible if it were not for our bee-lievers who support the Healthy Hive Foundation through donations. Congratulations to the recipients and thank you to everyone who submitted a nomination. We are so excited to see where environmentally-conscious education and empowerment can take us!

BERTHA SADLER MEANS YOUNG WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP ACADEMY

Social entrepreneurship and education is one of Healthy Hive Foundation’s main missions, so working with the Young Women's Leadership Academy to teach and collaborate with their Leadership Circle was truly a purposeful event. The Foundation and their founder, Mikaila Ulmer, conducted the event which received nationwide coverage thanks to CNN with the Austin Independent School District to inspire and work alongside young female leaders and several budding entrepreneurs in 6th to 8th grade. During the event, Mikaila shared her story as a young entrepreneur and taught a lesson about pollinators, the importance of biodiversity, and the steps it takes to become an entrepreneur while highlighting the three pillars of the Healthy Hive Foundation. The young leaders interacted with their own bee stories, got to try on a professional beekeeping suit and gained valuable insight from one entrepreneur to another with a lemonade social and Q&A after the lesson. 

SEEQ

During National Pollinator Month in 2022, Healthy Hive Foundation partnered with the Austin Nature and Science Center to host an event for Seeq, one of the fastest growing global tech corporations with an interest in sustainability. During Seeq’s annual Conneqt Conference, employees, partners and thought leaders from all over the world gathered in Austin, Texas to collaborate in a fully immersive experience that explored the latest innovations in data analytics. Healthy Hive Foundation provided resources for one of the events in which Seeq employees planted native, bee-friendly flowers and made bee feeders to be donated to community gardens, nature centers, and schools in Austin. While the flowers help encourage a diverse and beautiful environment, bee feeders can be greatly beneficial to hungry bees so that they can survive the winter as nectar and honey run low. It was a great experience curating an impactful environment for a diverse group of innovators to get creative, put their hands in the soil, connect and have fun while making a lasting impact on Austin’s communities.

Lady bird Johnson Wildflower Center

Healthy Hive Foundation is a proud sponsor of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, collaborating on a variety of projects, including adding bee education into the curriculum of its virtual youth programs. The Foundation works with young learners on educational projects and on incorporating bee education into its popular Tuesday Twilights events.

Sustainable Food Center

Preserving and increasing the U.S. honey bee population has become more important than ever in recent years as parasites, disease, pesticides and loss of habitat have decreased the bee population across the country from 6 million managed honey bee colonies in 1947 to just 2.89 million in 2017. Healthy Hive Foundation has helped fund the creation of Austin’s Sustainable Food Center teaching apiary to be used by the community at-large, but especially youth who could attend a buzz-worthy field trip  to learn about pollinators and the importance of pollinator-friendly gardening and farming techniques.

Tour de Hives

The Central Texas Tour de Hives event started in 2013 and Healthy Hive Foundation has help sponsored Tour de Hives for several years. Today, Tour de Hives does everything from encourages residents to demonstrate how to incorporate bees and their honey into home gardening to cooking for inexpensive, healthy, and sustainable food. This annual event is held on National Honey Bee Day and helps raise money to support  local bee keepers, public education and bee research.

San francisco state university

Just in time for National Pollinator Week, San Francisco State University (SFSU) has released preliminary findings from a before-after control impact study conducted over the past two years to reveal that bee populations held steady after the 2017 fires. However, the data collected also confirms a significant decrease in the number of species over the past 15 years.

In 2020, SFSU released important data from a control impact study which was partially funded by the Healthy Hive Foundation. Gretchen LeBuhn, PhD, wanted to understand if pre- and post-fire plant-pollinator networks will assist in appropriate restoration of plant communities and guide future fire management to positively impact wild bees. Conducted over the past two years, the research reveals that while bee populations held steady after the intense 2017 wildfires in Napa and Sonoma counties, they have significantly declined over the past 15 years.

Lemonade Stand Bill

Lemonade Day is a fun, experiential program that teaches youth how to start, own and operate their very own business…a lemonade stand. Along with Lemonade Day National President Steven Gordon, Healthy Hive Foundation’s founder, Mikaila Ulmer, served as panelists for the “Briefing on Entrepreneurship Education: Ignite the Entrepreneurial Spirit!” on Capitol Hill, February 26, 2020.

This interactive discussion focused on supporting the development of 21st century youth through programs and public policy. New York Congresswoman Grace Meng introduced H.R. 5253, the 21st Century Entrepreneurship Act, in late 2019. This bill, which had already garnered considerable support, seeked to expand entrepreneurship programs in public schools (grades K–12), community colleges, libraries, and other community spaces to equip young people with the tools necessary to become the next generation of entrepreneurs and innovators.

By supporting the Lemonade Stand Bill, Healthy Hive Foundation continues to promote youth entrepreneurship, advocating for youth activism.

Details about the bill can be found at here.

Heifer International

We’re helping families around the world stimulate their crops through pollination and their businesses and income through honey, wax and pollen.

Texas Beekeepers Association

In addition to supporting ongoing bee preservation research, we’ve donated two beehive nucs to save up to 50,000 bees.