When I was 14 years old, my Dad and I found a wild honey bee hive in an old oak tree. It was at the edge of an industrial park in Lawrenceville, Ga. We went to the hardware store and bought a bee veil and smoker, and promptly set out to “rob’ the bees of their honey. With no prior knowledge about the subject, we aggravated the hive, and within seconds, my Dad was stung several times. I, however, was undeterred. My Grandmother had told me stories about how my Great Grandfather had worked with bees and rarely got stung. I believed I could do the same, so when the hive settled down, I approached them again without the veil or smoke. The experience was surreal as I held my breath and fought back the fear of being stung. Miraculously, I wasn’t.

That experience fostered a desire that would revisit me in 2016 when I decided to buy my first personal hive. I spent the next 5 years learning as much as I could about the process of tending bees. Since then, I’ve made a lot of mistakes, and have come to realize that there is no such thing as a bee whisperer! I’ve been stung dozens of times in my own apiary, including in the eye, but my love for the honeybee has only grown year over year. I am amazed at how the hive operates and the rules of nature that govern them individually, and more importantly, collectively. Their success and survival depends on both, just like the business organizations I have founded. When we work together (just like them), we create something where the “whole is greater than the sum of its parts”.

Over time, God has revealed to me the idea to combine three passions in my life: my success in business, my love for honeybees, and my desire to be charitable to mankind. The idea is to create something even better, maybe something the world has never seen before. I developed the dream of utilizing the honeybee’s non-perishing liquid gold to provide fundraising opportunities for local charities, baseball teams, cheerleading squads and mission groups (we call them FUNdraising Partners!) to raise money for their causes, thereby passing one blessing to another.

My hope is to create a circle of sustaining activities that feed each other perpetually. The more honey the organizations sell, the more hives we can purchase to create more awareness, both for the honeybee population and the organizations that utilize the profits to do more good in the world. The idea of Bee My Blessing™ became a providential reality when I was introduced to James Eubanks, a master beekeeper, through our mutual friend, Josh Sheppard (Owner of Sentry Pest Control). Thanks to the blessings of God and nature, the vision has become solidified ten years sooner than we anticipated! We launched Bee My Blessing™ two weeks after my initial conversation with James, and I could not be more excited about it. I hope you join us on our journey to make Bee My Blessing™ “The Sweetest FUNdraiser On Earth”!

Michael Carr is the Abundant Life Broker®, real estate entrepreneur, and bestselling author. He’s also America’s Top Selling Real Estate Auctioneer, and has been actively involved in the sale of over 78,000 homes…more than any other single person in history. He has been licensed in as many as 27 states in the continental U.S. as a broker and an auctioneer and has conducted over 10,000 auctions throughout the last 28 years. He credits his success to creating organizations that can operate like a beehive, where the “whole is greater than the sum of its parts”. He lives by the axiom of getting everything you want out of life by helping others get what they want first. His other entrepreneurial roles include CEO of Michael Carr & Associates, Anything Real Estate®, and COO of BrandFace®, an international personal branding firm. His goal in both organizations is to help real estate professionals and entrepreneurs maximize their success by first approaching their career from a place of boldness and abundance. He’s best known for saying, “Prosperity favors the bold, so be BOLD”.