[piano intro] - [Announcer] This program was made possible by.

- [Narrator] You may have noticed some exciting new changes downtown, that's thanks to our hardworking community with help from us at Downtown Asheboro Incorporated.

Here at Downtown Asheboro Incorporated, we strive to promote a vibrant downtown environment while preserving the history of our unique architecture.

From advising historic building owners on safe and effective development practices to working with City Hall to update regulations that support future growth, Downtown Asheboro Incorporated, growing Asheboro from its roots.

- [Narrator] Heart of NC is dedicated to lifting up cultural experiences in Randolph County, like hearing homegrown bluegrass music at the Sunset or Liberty Theaters, taking home pottery from internationally renowned artists in Seagrove, the pottery capital of the country, learning NASCAR's legacy at The Petty Museum, and feeding giraffes at the largest natural habitat zoo in the world, Heart of NC wants you to know all Randolph County has to offer.

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[bright music] [bright music continues] - So, okay, tell me a little bit about how you started Bee Downtown.

- It was never meant to be started.

It was just I couldn't keep beehives where I lived and asked the owners at American Tobacco, and this is weird 'cause she knows the story.

- It's so good.

- And she's so good at listening so intently, like I could say this verbatim to you and you'd never know that I was now Leigh-Kathryn.

- Never know.

- We gotta start with the easy ones, the lobs.

- Okay, thank you, all right, so I'm ready.

- Lobbing.

- Thank you.

[bright music] - [Eliza] Hello and welcome to "Making North Carolina", a series exploring entrepreneurs as they pursue invention, creation, and impact in their communities.

This episode features Leigh-Kathryn Bonner, or as I call her, LK.

LK was born in Raleigh and spent much of her early life on her family's farm.

She's the founder of Bee Downtown, a startup based in Raleigh, North Carolina, that's goal is to bring agriculture back into our daily lives.

Leigh-Kathryn joined me on my farm, Panther Creek, so that we could ask her some questions.

My name is Eliza Lawdley, join me as I explore a small part of what created LK's dream of Bee Downtown and keeps her and her team motivated today.

- So Bee Downtown started when I was a junior at NC State.

And it wasn't meant to be a business, I just wanted somewhere to keep a beehive, and studies showed that honeybees did very well in urban environments.

So I asked the owners of American Tobacco Campus in Durham, where I was interning for, if I could put a beehive on their roof.

And they said yes, and they said you might wanna talk to Burt's Bees, their world headquarters is here, they don't have bees.

Burt's assumed they would not be allowed to have bees, you know, with their landlord.

And then, the landlord came to them and asked, "Do you want bees?"

And so, they got bees and were so excited and it just, it snowballed and we realized that there was an opportunity for this.

And now I just keep putting 'em places.

They just keep growing.

- Yeah, these are some of the biggest companies in the world.

How did you end up continuing in that vein of working with some of these leading companies?

- It's wild to just like, when we reel off like MetLife, Cisco, Microsoft, Georgia Power, Georgia World Congress Center, New York Stock Exchange, Cox Enterprises, Chick-Fil-A, Delta, AT&T, it is like every time I do it, it's super humbling because it's like, whoa, how did we do this?

- Right.

- How did we make this happen?

And I think a big piece of it was we didn't raise money, we built a business that we were so focused on people finding the value in that we were able to shift and morph to whatever a partner wanted, we chose to call them partners, not clients, because they're our partners, they're our people, they're our friends at Bee Downtown and I think that that's been a huge piece of why Bee Downtown has been successful is, you know, the bees always come first, but the relationships with our partners are a very, very close second.

[bright music] So, well, they asked me if there was somebody that knew Bee Downtown, that loves Bee Downtown, that understood the history of Bee Downtown that could do this interview, and immediately, I was like, "Yes, Eliza."

And that was so exciting for me to get to ask you to do this because you've been with Bee Downtown from pretty much the beginning in so many quasi different ways.

But I would love to hear how you think this all started and how it went and how it's going in this relationship.

- No, thank you for that, okay.

So my earliest memories were of Bee Downtown's earliest lead beekeeper pulling up to a community garden that I was managing at the time, and I remember their bees, just streams of bees were coming out of the back of a truck.

And there was a beautifully painted beehive that was arriving to our garden that we had painted as a community.

We had raised money at that point to bring on the hive and the whole neighborhood was excited about it.

And we had all kinds of different folks, kids, partners, folks from the nonprofit that I was with at the time, all on site to welcome the bees.

And it felt truly like livestock coming into a city but in such a small scale but with such a big splash and impact.

And so, I quickly left that job and joined the Bee Downtown team because it was that exciting and that impactful, both to me as a garden manager and a farmer, and then also just seeing the impact that it had in the community.

Yeah.

- You left us, which we all- - I did.

- It still hurts all of us.

- No.

- But to go to grad school.

- Yeah.

- And to follow your dream.

And then a couple years ago, I asked if I could put a couple beehives out at Panther Creek.

- [Eliza] Right.

- And now, this year, you peaked out at, what, 50 hives out at the farm?

- We keep 50 hives here, yeah, at Panther Creek Farm.

- Wow, so it is also our biggest out yard that we have.

And this out yard is so special because it's the out yard we use to feed all of the colonies that are going to our expansion cities.

And so, it's a very special out yard because it's rooted in very deep friendship that has helped Bee Downtown to grow so much.

And so, those hives have good juju going out, into the new cities for success.

- All over the country.

- All over the country.

- It's pretty sweet.

- It's exciting.

- [Eliza] So Leigh-Kathryn, Bee Downtown I hear is growing.

What is the next move for y'all's company?

- [Leigh-Kathryn] We're taking flight.

- Yeah, that's what we hear.

- As one would say as a beekeeper.

- What's the next move?

- So once we really learned like what was so special about Bee Downtown, we built, we practiced, we iterated, and then, last year, the plan was to go to two new cities.

But it kind of got put on halt with the world being how it was.

So this year, we've expanded to Richmond, we will announce DC soon, formally, we're in Charlotte and our biggest longest move ever is Tampa, Florida.

- Wow.

- [Leigh-Kathryn] So it's super overwhelming.

- Whoa.

- To go to four new cities in one year, it's amazing.

We've decided to stay in what we're calling the Southern Smile, you know, like from DC over to Texas.

That's our sweet spot that we're gonna focus very deeply on is loving the southern agricultural community and honoring that community that we all grew up in.

- [Eliza] Right.

- [Leigh-Kathryn] And then, we're gonna keep going and it brings me so much joy to keep building.

- [Eliza] Right, right.

- [Leigh-Kathryn] Because I know that there's impact to be made.

- What do your core team members look like?

- Really hardworking.

- Yeah.

- Not lazy.

- Yeah.

- Like, just a team player, a great attitude because we're outside a lot.

- Right.

- We sweat a lot.

You gotta be okay with getting down and dirty.

- Fair enough.

- As my mother would say, cowgirl up, you know?

You gotta be able to cowgirl up to be do this job longterm.

- Gill knows best.

- [Leigh-Kathryn] Exactly.

- Yeah, and your family has a long history in agriculture.

Have your parents taken to this idea quickly or was it a convincing process?

- Yeah.

- What does that look like?

- My mom's background is in ag, my dad's background is in business and entrepreneurship, and a farmer is also an entrepreneur, so they had that combined.

We joke we got the best part of my mom's, like dreaming, scheming family, and the best part of my dad's like execute and get paid part of the family.

I wanted to build something where people could find value in agriculture.

People that aren't typically experiencing agriculture 'cause there is a break in that now of we've lost a lot of the understanding of the respect for farmers and the hard work it takes.

And if they don't have the chance to see it, they won't ever understand it, especially in cities.

And so, we bring little bits of ag back into cities to have a much broader conversation around the importance of environmental stewardship and sustainability and urban ag.

Because we're seeing a shift back to a lot more urban ag than we used to.

You told me one time this, and I love to tell people this, it's like my favorite thing, nowhere in mother nature do you find a naturally occurring monoculture, and the fact that we think that's the best way to do things today isn't true, it's just not.

We're fighting mother nature at all times when we have these large monoculture crops and farmlands.

So small agricultural properties, like this, can make a huge difference within society.

- Yeah, and what's a piece of advice, okay, that you would give to a startup that would kind of launch them into that period of growth that y'all have experienced in these last couple of years?

From like a very, very small kinda incubator type pilot to this amazing company you've built.

- That's a great question.

I think, you know, my parents gave me one year to be profitable, pay myself a livable wage and show growth.

Most startups aren't built like that anymore.

They used to be, they're not anymore.

It's all about funding and raising rounds.

And so, personally, in my mind, you know, build a business that makes money, not a business that raises money.

Build something that you're finding the value in the ROI and you can be profitable from the start.

And I know not every business can be built that way, but the Bee Downtown could and that's the path we chose and it's what's made us successful.. - [Eliza] And can you talk a little bit about what those products are for Bee Downtown, kind of in that experience economy?

- Yeah, we just started building these programs where it went from a sustainability business where bees go on campuses and that's it, to we're building and helping companies build great places to work, throughout the year, employees can do just a slew of different programs with us from building their own DIY native pollinator hotels to learning how to plant for all pollinators, not just honeybees, in their own yards, to doing a hive tour with us to learning about leadership and how a beehive is a great metaphor for how you can be an effective leader, build high performing teams.

So it's really what we're trying to do is create environmental stewards.

The bees are the advocate for that and like the launching off point, but it's more than the bees, it's about your impact in the world.

- And I'm guessing in this work, you've come across a lot of skeptics who have pushed back on that, and what are the arguments that you've heard that are most common that you all try to kind of reframe through your work?

- Yeah, you know, I think, well, Ben just walked up and Ben's a great person to talk about this, Ben is our biologist, he's our chief learning officer or our chief culture officer and our principal beekeeper.

And he and I talk a lot about this, so I might make Ben come over here and help.

- Perfect, that sounds great.

Ben?

[bright music] Ben is a core member of Bee Downtown.

As LK just said, he's the chief culture officer and principal beekeeper.

If you're thinking he must know a lot for LK to have such high regard for his practice, you'd be right.

Ben was already on the farm working on the many hives and was kind enough to sit down with us to help us field questions.

- All right, so Ben, Eliza was asking, like, in regards to if there's been any skeptics around how we're building Bee Downtown, if this will actually continue to work, is it a fad?

- So, yeah, there's lots going on there, safety is a big part of that.

People are worried about putting bees in urban areas, and the reality is they're honeybees, not human bees.

So they're going and looking for sweet nectar, so they're there and people don't even know sometimes.

We put 'em on rooftops and people are like, "There's bees up there?"

So yes, it's safe, you know, we put fences around and and people generally, you know, don't wanna get too close.

We haven't had any incidents.

Health of the bees is the other one, Like, is this good for bees?

Why would you put bees in cities?

Well, weirdly, there's some research that shows putting bees in urban areas is great because there's lots of plants, diversity of plants, people have gardens, there's arboretums, there's backyard gardens, professional gardens, flower gardens, vegetable gardens.

So there's this diversity of food so the bees are healthy.

So it is actually good for the bees.

And then, just in interacting with the different corporations and all their employees, people are becoming more aware of how to help, which generally means planting things in your yard, providing habitat for native bees, providing food for all bees by planting flowers and just spraying less chemicals, lots of different things and people are learning things and approaching their stewardship of the environment in a much better way.

- And that's been really cool to see, like the amount of families of our partners that are bees for Halloween is wild.

The amount of people that are like, "Can I borrow a bee suit or do you have a bee costume that my kids, we're gonna be bees and one's gonna be a beekeeper," and they're so proud of their company.

- Right.

- For not only getting bees but for teaching them how to participate beyond the workday.

- Right.

- That to me is what it's all about.

You know, my favorite time in a beehive is when somebody holds a frame for the first time and they're just in awe, it's the first time they've ever made that link to agriculture, to food production, to caring for beings.

And you know, we're called beekeepers because we are their keepers, it's our job to be the enablers of their good.

And it's to watch people like click and see that is, it brings me like the absolute most joy 'cause that's what my grandpa gifted me growing up and all of the cousins and grandchildren and now great grandchildren.

We got to have that link at a very young age, which gave us a very deep respect for the outdoors and nature in a way that most people never get.

- Right, and why is it that you all think there's been that disconnect for folks?

- That's a serious question.

- [laughs] I think we're like one too many generations removed now.

So like if I'm ever speaking, I'll say like, "Raise your hand if your great grandparent was a farmer."

Pretty much every hand goes up.

If your grandparent was a farmer or lived on a farm, if your parent was, do you, and by the time I get to like your parent or you, in a sea of 500 people, there's maybe three hands that go up.

They've never seen it, like, they just, they've never been invited to participate.

- And I'm curious, Ben, what's your favorite part?

'Cause you often lead these hive tours for larger groups, are you seeing folks catch that excitement on the very first hive tour or does it take kind of these repeat visits as y'all build these partnerships?

- No, people love it the first time.

And that is definitely one of the favorite parts of my job is doing the hive tours because there's so much excitement.

I've worked lots of jobs, but, you know, I do a hive tour and I hear probably once or twice, "You have the coolest job in the world," which is just fun to hear.

- [Eliza] Right.

- And there's so much excitement, people are learning and they're reconnecting that disconnect of like, oh wow, that's where honey comes from?

That's how it's made?

Honey's the only food that insects make that we eat?

And just you see lights going off and, you know, we learned as an organization too, early on, people do the hive tours and they're like, "How do I get started?"

And we used to be like, "Well, you do this and this."

And now it's more like, "Well, if you're gonna get into this, know that it's a serious commitment."

So it's not that we dissuade people, but we don't encourage people to get into it without really understanding the responsibility of keeping a live animal.

- So what I typically tell people is build a raised bed and cultivate and care for that raised bed, one or two, for a year.

If at the end of that year, you are all for it, you've gotta lay out for seven more beds, you're asking friends if you can put beds and, you know, in their yards and you are loving nurturing the bees and all of the pollinators, then start to go to beekeeping classes and start to go to beekeeping clubs and get a mentor.

- [Eliza] Right.

- Your likelihood of losing your hives in the first three years with no mentor and no education is almost a hundred percent.

- Right, and does everyone have a knowledge of bees and beekeeping who join the Bee Downtown team?

Is that part of it?

- [Leigh-Kathryn] Yeah, they have to have a working knowledge.

- Okay.

- If they're gonna work at Bee Downtown, that is a rule of mine because you can't have someone running Bee Downtown as, you know, a VP of finance or head of marketing that knows nothing about bees, that doesn't understand when budgets need to happen for purchasing equipment that doesn't understand, you know, the correct terminology for beekeeping because you can stick your foot in your mouth really fast, and we are educated, we are the experts in what we do and at least have to have a working knowledge if you're gonna be on our team.

- Right, so, Ben, did you get into beekeeping as a young child?

Did you find it later?

What's the story?

- I found it later.

I grew up in Wisconsin, Appleton, Wisconsin.

So right on the, it's called the Tension Zone, north of it is a boreal forest and the plains is below.

And so, in the Tension Zone, you have unique species as well as species from both northern boreal and plains.

So it's a really cool spot.

But we spent all of our weekends going up into the forest, up north, as you say, in Wisconsin.

And so, I just spent a lot of time outside and just learned to love being outside in the woods or just anywhere.

And fast forward, I worked in higher education and I was just missing it.

So when bees came along and these opportunities kept popping up to spend more time outside, I did and I just got happier and happier.

So that's my childhood connection to bees.

- That's amazing.

And Leigh-Kathryn, your family grew up with bees, so when did that start for you personally?

- Yeah, so, I'm a fourth generation beekeeper, but I didn't get into bees until college.

So the bees basically took a hiatus on our farm growing up and it was very heavily a cattle farm.

My grandpa stopped growing tobacco, my mom calls our farm these days Redneck Disneyland.

But the bees came right before I left for college.

And as much as I loved just playing on the farm, when the bees came, I was just like, "What are these boxes?

What is going on?"

And there was an opportunity for my freshman first year college class, to count it as a science, but to take Introduction to Bees and Beekeeping from the same professor that my uncle took Introduction to Bees and Beekeeping with a generation before me at NC State, who also was one of my grandfather's really good friends.

So I was like, I'm gonna get an A in this class, I've got to, there's too much legacy here for me to mess this up.

[laughs] But the way, his name is Dr. Johnny Ambrose, and was just so beloved in the North Carolina, still is just beloved in the North Carolina beekeeping community and really across the country.

But he taught over 5,000 students, and I can't tell you how many times I have somebody come up to me and say, "I took Introduction to Bees and Beekeeping and it was the best class I ever took at NC State."

- I had that happen yesterday.

- See?

- Wow.

- It happens all the time, he was so impactful.

And I think that's one of the things, one of the reasons why I know Bee Downtown does create the impact that we say it creates, because I see the impact that Dr. Ambrose's work has created on people for literally generations.

- Right.

- And, you know, as an indicator species, honeybees are not doing well, native bees are not doing well, we need to stop and listen to what they're trying to tell us.

You don't have to become a beekeeper to fix the problem, but if you could set out some water in the summer for the bees so that they have something to drink, if you could scoop a bee out of the swimming pool and let her dry off, rather than drown her, you make a difference.

And the collective of everyone doing just a little bit turns into something far beyond with a greater impact than we could have ever imagined.

- Right.

- And that is like the driving force for me, each and every day behind Bee Downtown is we do a little bit at Bee Downtown, but we work with companies collectively with, you know, well over a million employees.

- [Eliza] Right.

- [Leigh=Kathryn] They're huge corporations, we get the chance to work with them every day and they know about the bees and so they do a little bit more and we can create difference, and, my, that was such a gift to me.

- In Wisconsin, No Mow May is a big thing.

So in the hometown I'm from, Appleton, like, it's like a big thing, don't cut your grass, it's good for the bees.

And just like, I get messages like, "Didn't cut the grass, Ben."

I'm like, great, I appreciate that.

- Good.

- So, yeah, those sorts of things happen all the time.

Someone will become a beekeeper, they're thinking about it, and they're like, "I know you do it, you know, can I ask you questions?"

So yeah, it happens and it's pretty cool.

- Yeah.

- That's awesome.

- [Eliza] What do you all do to like recharge the tank personally?

Do y'all have hobbies?

Do you, you know, lean on your family for support?

- Just beekeeping.

- [Eliza] Or you do beekeeping?

What does that look like for recharging the battery?

- [Leigh-Kathryn] You know, I think, like, well, we're- - Working on it.

- Yeah, everyone on our team in a leadership role is working on what it looks like to pace yourself, I don't even know if you can pace yourself during bee season but to at least ask for help.

- Right.

- Ben and Scotty told me the other day that I was at a point where I needed to take a week off and I didn't listen to them and was like, "I'll take a week off later, there's work to be done."

And I called them on Monday, they told me like Thursday, I called them that Monday, crying, like, "I can't do it, I literally need a mental health day."

And if I had just listened to them.

[laughs] - Right.

- It would've been fine.

- I called it.

- Yeah, it's just, she's done, she's done.

- Dogs is a secondary thing.

- Yeah, therapy dogs.

- [Eliza] Yeah, I was gonna say, you're both are big animal lovers, so what does that look like outside of bees?

- Well, we do let dogs in the office.

- [Eliza] Okay.

- So they're very much therapy puppies, they'll come in, which is very exciting, new rule, not allowed in any sort of like honey area.

- [Ben] Restricted areas and rules around dogs.

- Right.

- Gotta vacuum, gotta clean.

- [Eliza] Good.

- [Ben] Yeah, outside a dogs, see, this is the problem.

Bees, dogs.

- Bees and dogs, that can be it.

- Bees, dogs and beer.

- And beer.

- And beer, great.

- That's enough.

- I think that's the quote of the day.

- That's everything we need in life, bees, dogs and beer.

[laughs] Was that it?

Cut.

- So thank you so much, Leigh-Kathryn, for this time and for talking about Bee Downtown's journey.

It's been incredible to be a part of and really appreciate your time today.

Yeah.

- It's the best, thank you.

- [Eliza] And thank you for joining us while we explored a small part of the life of Leigh-Kathryn Bonner, an innovator and entrepreneur creating change and growth in and beyond her community.

I hope you will join us next time for our next episode of "Making North Carolina", as we continue to explore the brilliant minds that live all around us.

[bright music] [bright music continues] [bright music continues] [bright music continues] - [Narrator] You may have noticed some exciting new changes downtown, that's thanks to our hardworking community with help from us at Downtown Asheboro Incorporated.

Here at Downtown Asheboro Incorporated, we strive to promote a vibrant downtown environment while preserving the history of our unique architecture.

From advising historic building owners on safe and effective development practices to working with City Hall to update regulations that support future growth, Downtown Asheboro Incorporated, growing Asheboro from its roots.

- [Narrator] Heart of NC is dedicated to lifting up cultural experiences in Randolph County, like hearing homegrown bluegrass music at the Sunset or Liberty theaters, taking home pottery from internationally renowned artists in Seagrove, the pottery capital of the country, learning NASCAR's legacy at The Petty Museum, and feeding giraffes at the largest natural habitat zoo in the world, Heart of NC wants you to know all Randolph County has to offer.

Experience Randolph, the heart of North Carolina.