St. Croix – Plenty of kids set up lemonade stands all over the world. In many cases it’s the start of an entrepreneurial way of life. But only in America can a five-year old by the name of Mikalia Ulmer set up a one-dollar-a-cup lemonade stand in front of her house, use her great grandmother’s 1940’s recipe, and wind up selling so much lemonade that by the age of eleven she is appearing on the blockbuster investment TV show Shark Tank and getting a personal invite to the White House to meet President Barack Obama.
To say Mikalia is a wonderment and inspiration to one and all fledgling entrepreneurs is really an enormous understatement. Born in Houston Texas, to D’Andra and Theo Ulmer, Mikalia attended St. Stephen’s Episcopal School in Austin, Texas. She decided to set up her lemonade stand using her great grandmother’s recipe which includes honey from local beekeepers and flaxseed. The unusual combination of ingredients drove her customers into the habit of coming back for more. The lemonade sold so well she was asked by the owner of a local pizza shop to bottle her product so he could carry it in his shop. The rest is lemonade history.
She received a $60,000 investment from Shark Tank’s Daymon John to grow her business, and in 2017 received another $800,000 from a consortium of pro football players. In 2016 she introduced Barack Obama at the United State of Women Summit who called her “an amazing young lady.”
She came to St. Croix this past week to participate in a little bee facts and honey tasting get together, along with a live reading of her memoir Bee Fearless: Dream Like a Kid, at the Florence Williams Library in C’sted, with her new bee-friend local beekeeper VI Honeyman. The Healthy Hive Bee Tour, is an interactive show that Mikalia nicknamed: Honey, Dreams & Hives: Bee Fearless in St. Croix. It was presented by the Healthy Hive Foundation and moderated by Amy Parker DeSorbo, Territorial Director for DPNR’s Libraries, Archives and Museums Division.
Mikalia’s little lemonade stand, now an award-winning corporate entity, with her as CEO, and managed by her business savvy parents, is called Me & the Bees Lemonade. It has grown to being sold in over 1,500 stores nationwide, including Whole Foods, Cost Plus World Market. Vitamin Cottage Natural Grocers, and Fresh Market. Her sales equal 500,000 bottles a year. Not bad for a kid who started with a dollar-a-bottle lemonade stand.
She was recently asked what inspired the title of her memoir, Bee Fearless: Dream Like a Kid.
“Dream Like a Kid was inspired by my speech when I introduced President Obama at the United State of Women Summit. The speech was about why it’s important to dream like a kid because when kids dream, they dream big; they don’t think of the obstacles or things that come in the way of achieving that dream,” she remarked. “And then I realized, ‘hey, that’s really closely associated with fearlessness, going out there to achieve your goals and that’s a huge part of my company. I was pretty much like, ‘Who would have thought that a little girl would be able to change the world with a lemonade stand?’ So that’s where it came from, and I really want others to see how far dreaming like a kid can get you when it comes to business or pretty much just being a regular human being.”
Her partner on this leg of the Tour was none other than the master Beekeeper of St. Croix, Roniel Allembert, aka the VI Honeyman. Roniel, is a man who knows everything there is to know about bees and beekeeping.
He is a second generation beekeeper who runs over 380 bee hives in 20 locations around St. Croix. He has been teaching classes for the U.S. Virgin Islands Department of Agriculture for over ten years.
He was awarded Beekeeper of the Year in 2023, and Farmer of the Year in 2025. It is a delight to listen to him speak about everything you would want to know about the fascinating world of Bees. He explained to the packed room at the Florence Williams Library that the beehive is the structure, often a man made box or dwelling, that houses a colony of bees. Within the hive, there lives the colony’s Queen – The Queen Bee, and the worker bees, and seasonally, male drones live in the hive and raise their young, producing honey and pollen for their survival.
Someone from the audience asked if his bees knew him, and if he ever got stung?
“They don’t know me,” VI Honeyman admitted. “But I know them. And yes, I get stung all the time.”
This Reporter couldn’t help but think that when the VI Honeyman gets stung by one of his bees, it’s kind of a sting of love.
Yellow Cedar Media wanted to know what the future holds for Mikalia Ulmer, this young corporate wunderkind, whose nonprofit Healthy Hive Foundation was set up to help save the bees?
“I would like to continue coming up with flavors and make it the No. 1 lemonade in the country. That would be pretty cool,” Mikalia said.
Who could doubt her? When this Queen Bee gets to dreaming, it seems nothing in the world can stop her from making those dreams bee-come a true reality.
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