Nature is a wise and profound teacher. If you pay attention to all it has to teach you, you will discover many powerful lessons. Consider for a moment the life of a honey bee. She works tirelessly during her short life caring for her hive, collecting nectar, and producing only a 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey. Alone, her contributions seem small, but she is devoted to serving the tens of thousands of fellow workers in her hive. When the hive works together, pun intended, you get a pretty sweet reward. Two guys in our own backyard have adopted this hive mind mentality of helping others, similar to their friend the honey bee.

While the majority of us would tuck tail and run the other way at the sight of swarming bees, Kevin Woods, local beekeeper and co-owner of Bee 901, calmly inspects one of his four local hives producing “life-changing” honey. Dressed in his white beekeeping suit, he pulls out wooden inserts covered in honey bees. Woods “combs” over their efforts in making the sticky sweet substance we all know and love. Right away you can sense his excitement for beekeeping, but after talking with him, you start to feel his passion for good works.

Two years ago co-owner Nathan Bland sent long-time friend Woods a text saying something along the lines of: “I’ve come into some money. Is there something we can do to earn a profit and turn 100% back over to a charity in Memphis?” This accountant and creative team by day put their heads together and came up with a plan for raising their charitable dollars. “I believe in ‘growing where you are planted’,” says Bland. “I wanted to be part of something that was easily accessible and benefited our immediate community so my kids could be involved and see the impact of their work first hand.” The idea to sell honey collected from the bees started out as somewhat of a joke before Woods started to see an even bigger picture.

“We want to promote that Memphis can be loving, can be encouraging, can be helpful,” says Woods. “And after thinking on it, I was like, there’s a lot of B’s here, almost like a beehive, kind of joking to myself. So the more I thought about it, I realized there may be something to this beekeeping thing because most people love honey. It’s pretty cool how honey is made, and these are pretty interesting little creatures, from what little I knew at the time. I thought, this might be our niche!”

After doing their research, the guys went out looking for a local sponsor to assist with the costs of running the business. Ironically, that sponsorship came from Chris Murphy, owner of Inman Murphy Termite and Pest Control. “We need bees,” says Murphy. “Even though we’re in the pest control business and sometimes get a bad rep because people think we just want to kill everything and not be selective, we certainly need bees. It doesn’t hurt that I really like honey, and combining that with donating the money raised, I just thought it was a really good idea to get behind.”

Quickly Bland and Woods began to grow their hives during the Spring of 2017. Once a week, Woods would check in on the hive’s progress, while learning a thing or two from the ‘busy bees’. “Bees do whatever they can to make their hive the best place possible. They don’t worry about who voted for who, or who is wearing what. They focus on their one job at that time. One bee does not make a difference. Producing honey is a community effort,” says Woods. “Think of Memphis, our 901 area code, as one big hive. If we treat Memphis that same way (the way bees treat their hive), it’s a pretty sweet place to live, work, and play because there are so many good things going on here.”

Bee 901 encourages our communities to adopt this “hive mind” mentality towards helping others. “To ‘Bee 901’ means to be loving, supportive, and generous to everyone and provide them with an encounter of unconditional love,” says Woods. “We want Memphis to say ‘Oh yeah, I totally get it. It’s just like a beehive! We can be more like the bees. We can help people in need. We can do something small, and if we all do something small, we can make a pretty big impact together.”

Last October was the first harvest for Bee 901. The harvest process was an emotional experience for the guys, because not only was it a test of their beekeeping abilities, but it also meant whether they would have the means to make a charitable donation. “We’re just a couple of knuckleheads without any beekeeping experience, but we said, ‘alright, this is our moment of truth’,” recalls Woods. “So we extracted it (honey), and then we just turned that nozzle, and you wouldn’t believe how much honey came out at once! I mean it was gallons! It’s just so much fun to see all the bees. They did their one job. And you think, ‘Hey, what I’m making is going to help people in need’”. After bottling the raw honey and preparing it to sell at the Small Business Saturday event at Buff City Soap Company last November, the guys were anxious to see if Memphis would show up and support their mission. “We said look, this is the most overpriced honey you’ll ever see because 100% of the money you give us for this bottle of honey is going to charity. Not portions or percentages, but 100%. And sure enough, we sold out in probably an hour and a half. I mean, as soon as they unlocked the doors, it was a constant stream of people coming in. I looked at Nathan and was like, ‘man, we’re gonna run out’,” remembers Woods. “And we thought, there it is. It (the event) was full of good people that Saturday, and we saw the best of Memphis come through. It was a week or two after Thanksgiving, and we didn’t expect that many people to be shopping for honey at a soap store. That’s such an absurd story, but it worked! It just proves my point that this place is so full of good people.”

Bee 901 raised $2,400 dollars selling last year’s harvest and donated 100%, as promised, to King’s Daughters and Sons nursing home in Bartlett. Bland and Woods wanted the money to be “life-changing”, so they asked the facility not to spend it on just anything, but instead purchase something that would really make an impact on their residents lives. King’s Daughters and Sons Home took the donation and purchased rehabilitation equipment. “We had several patients we admitted following hospitalization for hip fractures,” recalls Nicole Wiles, Administrator of the King’s Home. “They all come with specific weight-bearing restrictions. With the Bungee Mobility Trainer, we were able to adjust the cords so we were absolutely positive how much weight they were actually bearing. It really made our patients confident in our skill level, and in particular, the fact that we were protecting their hip joints from re-injury. Their healing was phenomenal, and it was largely due in part to that piece of equipment.”

It’s now harvest time again for Bee 901. Woods will suit up one final time before winter to finally see the fruition of this year’s collection. “This honey is from your backyard! Your flowers, that tree you have, those bushes, they’re all helping us out in the pollination of this honey. It’s all from the 901 area code. Everything you get is from Memphis. I mean, it really is a taste of Memphis!” Make plans to visit the Rev in the Bible Museum on the Square for this year’s Small Business Saturday on November 24th to pick up your own sweet reminder to “be the Bee” in your area. Bee 901.