We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Lauren Anderson. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Lauren below.

Hi Lauren, thanks for joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

Teaching at a Science and Math school, I was always looking for engaging topics for high school students to authentically explore the world around them through the lens of science. But the one that would change my zip code, profession, and lifestyle, flew into my inbox one spring.

Students, at the school I taught at, needed to do a senior service project as part of the graduation requirement (something I recommend all campuses nurture), but one student was struggling more than the rest. He was a first-generation, college-bound student who could only think of one project: get bees on campus.

With a determination to get this kid graduated and onto his next chapter, I would have said yes to any realistic project, and I had just so happened to receive an email from a local beekeeper asking if we were interested in starting a school beekeeping program. The stars aligned, so I said yes, not knowing that this would change everything.

Fast forward 3 years and we’re up to 12 hives. As any beekeeper will tell you, one hive becomes 2, 2 hives become 4, and soon enough, you can end up with more hives than you have time for. But luckily, there was always someone in the community looking to learn and ecstatic that they could get a hive from us. From one school campus to 2 with community gardens tacked on, we were organizing elementary field trips to hives, running workshops and events on the weekends, and of course, honey sales where we would sell out immediately.

Then COVID hit and we all had to look at our lifestyles. Teaching high school full-time, running a city-wide beekeeping program, and watching relationships break as I couldn’t successfully juggle all the commitments and emotions caring for 150 high schoolers and 8,000,000 bees required. It was time for a change.

Over the next year, we restructured who would continue the bee programs and made plans to move back home to be near family and try to invent a sustainable method to educate and inspire, but in a way that didn’t lead to over-exhaustion and burnout. I packed up the car with a dog, cat, 4 beehives, and all my belongings to see if I could make this life as a full-time beekeeper work.

Fast forward 3 years, we have a blossoming business that has expanded state-wide with a staff of 12 beekeepers, dozens of apprentices, and a waitlist that can’t be satisfied. Although this is never what I thought teaching would become, this is some of the most rewarding work and leads me on a different adventure every day. While I no longer count my days in class periods or typical weekends, my team gets to work with countless students from pre-k to retirees. We get to mentor new beekeepers, take groups on field trips, and offer advice and condolences when hive problems arise. But the best part of it all is seeing the relationships that grow when people focus on nature, the thing that brings us all together.

If anything, this has taught me we’re all students. At least, anyone with an open mind is. If we’re lucky, we can create a lifestyle that allows us to continue to explore this world around us and see the science, beauty, and interconnectedness that exists among all of us, humans and insects alike.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

We provide beekeeping mentoring services to community members, gardens, businesses, and schools. Beekeeping has gotten very popular over the years, but there are many hurdles in starting on a beekeeping journey.

Terminology, equipment, observational skills, and experience can be very daunting..and to be honest, there is a lot of gate-keeping in the beekeeping world.

We strive to show all people that they can have a role in supporting honeybees and pollinators in general. Whether a one-time visit to a hive, year-long mentoring, or resources, we provide a network of beekeeping mentors to those who need them.

Have you ever had to pivot?

When this business started, I imagined a lifestyle where I could mentor and coach a handful of new beekeepers and make a modest, simple life for myself. And while I still strive to make that a reality, I had no idea how high the demand for this service would be.

One Facebook post gave me my first 4 clients. Then their friends found out, then word spread. Now we have over 100 hives in 80 different locations. Not an easy task for one person to manage.

Reflecting on this “blessing” we needed to make a new plan. We now needed a team of beekeepers.

Leaning into my interest in tech, we are moving this mentoring online.

While the best parts of my day are spent one-on-one with new beekeepers who are eager to learn, I cannot provide that experience to a never-ending waitlist of people. Instead, I have had to step back, and realize my role is to support others like me who want to make this adventure in beekeeping part of their work.

Learning how to build portals, respect tax laws, and calculate CODB..this is not what I love. But, knowing that this has already led to life-changing outcomes for the beekeepers we currently employ, I aspire to build a method for others to do the same. It’s no longer about my life, it’s about building something sustainable for us all.

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

We manufacture a wide variety of products from honey, beeswax, and propolis, all produced by honeybees.

These products first came from my days of teaching high school chemistry. Anyone who has taught science can tell you about density columns… Pour liquids into a container and watch them separate by how dense the liquid is. Not rocket science.

But I wanted to do something different. Could we understand how honey is created by taking liquids and monitoring their density as bees manipulate them in the hive? First, bees bring in nectar (sugar water from flowers). Let’s calculate the density of that…Then, nectar gets processed by bees exchanging the nectar between their mouths until it gets stored in the hive’s honeycomb. Next, they use their wings to evaporate off the water creating honey which they then cap with wax for storage.

Students creating density columns from these ingredients then turned into what about beeswax? What else can we do with honey? beeswax? this sticky stuff in the hives called propolis?

Fast forward and these high school students were making soaps, shoe cleaner, car waxes, lotions, anything you could imagine out of items the bees produce.

Years later, I still use their initial recipes to experiment and try out different ingredients to make new products for our business. We now focus on sourcing locally with minimal environmental impact while only using the honey and beeswax from our hives. That way we can be assured many synthetic chemicals used in beekeeping don’t make their way into our products.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://calmandconfidence.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/calmandconfidence/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CalmAndConfidence/

Image Credits
All Brand Photos: Sarah Reeves Photo https://www.sarareevesphoto.com/ Personal Photo: Bryan Clifton Photo https://www.bcliftonphoto.com/index