Bees brought this family together, and bees are what's going to keep them together. Find out how these bees helped this couple shape the rest of their lives.
The Bee Babes
Emily and Ryan Mueller were an eccentric couple that loved sharing their personal lives along with their professional lives. They met each other while working in a bee conservancy. From there, they got stung by the love bug and decided to marry and start a business together just three years after their introduction.
Takes the Bees
They decided to open a bee removal service company out of their home, where they also kept their family bees. Both Emily and Ryan had a major love for bees, like, they were completely infatuated with them. Over time, they gathered enough bee stuff to decorate their entire house to be “bee themed...”
Chasing Thier Dreams
Along with their obsession with the buzzy, bumbling bugs, the couple also raised their own bees that they would rescue from strange situations. They owned and operated the largest privately owned bee sanctuary in America. With their passions intertwining, this couple was able to make their lives exactly what they wanted them to be, full of bees.
Mueller Honey Bee
The couple used their resources to start a couple more businesses within their business. Not only would they take in displaced bees, they started a brand called Mueller Honey Bee, which sold beeswax products and honey to benefit their research. Amidst all of this positivity, the couple had something unsuspected in store for them on the horizon…
Even Better News
They found out that Emily was pregnant! Just after things started to take off for the couple financially, learning that they were going to have a child just put the cherry on top of the cake. This was not Emily’s first rodeo though, before she was married to Ryan, she had three other children. Ryan loved all his other children like they were his own, but this baby was particularly special to him.
Products a' Plenty
Nothing could have been better for the couple. They were running their dream businesses, they had a kid on the way, they were passionate about what they were doing and they were madly in love with one another. The couple was so happy together that they decided to celebrate in a unique way…
For the Business
To promote their business, the Muellers decided to take bee themed maternity photos. The only hangup with this is that the bees would have to be trained precisely for this event. The Muellers had some time to burn before the date, but since they were so busy, they could only dedicate a minimal amount of effort to train their bees.
Just Like Queen B
The Muellers wanted to model like celebrities since Beyonce’s maternity photos were poppin’ at the time. Instead of hiring a private photographer, Ryan decided to train himself to take artistic photos. After all, they did have to market their brand, someone had to take photos. As Emily’s due date crept closer, the couple prepared for the photos more and more…
Unruly Bees
Under dire circumstances and a massive time crunch, Emily was unable to entirely train her bees to remain calm while they were around her. Their initial idea was to have the bees swarm around Emily while the photos were being taken, but that takes months of intense training to get the bees to swarm and not attack.
Taking the Plunge
Emily really wanted to make the bees the center of attention in this photoshoot, and she was unwilling to sacrifice her time and efforts that brought her to making this decision. There are some unstable methods to make bees cooperate with people, but they are incredibly risky and could result in serious injury. In addition to that, the decision that Emily wanted to make could have stressed the hive out so much that the bees would leave…
Risky Maneuver
Unafraid of the consequences, Emily slathered her stomach with honey and opened her hive door. The bees that came out were confused and acted strangely. Eventually though, they all flocked to the honey that was painted on Emily’s stomach.
Tensions Rise
As the bees began to calm down, Emily gently began sitting down into the flower patch that she had planned to take the photos. She focused on calming herself, lowering her heart rate and making sure her breath was steady. Bees can sense the change of heat and different pheromones that people put off, so it was imperative that she remained stable. As she relaxed more and more, more bees flocked to her stomach…
Worth the Pain
At a point, Emily became completely overwhelmed by the bees. She started to lose her cool a little bit, prompting the bees to react negatively. Emily sustained a few stings on her stomach, but she gritted her teeth and calmed herself down through the pain. She knew that a few stings would be worth the gratification she would get from seeing these photos developed.
The End of it All
Suddenly, she started getting stung more and more. Ryan began to notice and he ran over to Emily. Fortunately, he had a smoke gun. This pulled the bees off of Emily’s stomach. He had strategically smeared honey on a nearby branch, and the bees flocked to that. He then cut the branch off and began to lower the swarm of bees back into their hive box…
Picking Up the Pieces
Emily didn’t need any medical attention, she had about a dozen stings on her stomach, but after applying some lotion to the stings, the swelling went right down. Ryan helped her to her feet, she was woozy but she recalled that this experience was a very special one for her.
One for the Books
Emily had never been covered in bees before. Her love for the buzzy bugs was so strong that she was able to ignore the pain of the stings because this was so exciting. She remembered that the bees smelled like lavender and lemongrass. Just like that, the photo shoot was done and the couple struck off to get their photos professionally edited and developed…
Post Development
When the photos came out, the couple was overjoyed. They knew that this was the perfect thing to help them get their business off the ground and out into the open. The photos were truly beautiful, they looked wild and organic, which wasn’t exactly how Emily wanted them to look, but that’s the way it went down.
Tossing Them Out There
When it came time to decide what to do with the photos, they started by posting them on their businesses Facebook. Expecting the few likes from locals that they usually get, the couple turned their phones off and had a date night. Little did they know, something was brewing on their Facebook profile…
Bigger Than We Thought
The next morning, the couple woke up to find that their story had been shared more than 10,000 times, and they had over 100,000 likes on their material! Ryan and Emily were elated.
Who Would Have Thought?
By the end of the picture’s popularity, Mueller Honey Bee gained more than 15,000 more likes on their page. Their inboxes were filled to the brim with inquiries about purchasing products. However, most people were inquiring about their photoshoot, a TON of people wanted to pay Ryan and Emily to take their photos with the bees…
Health Concerns
The couple dabbled in taking maternity shoots with the bees. They actually spent the time to train them to be able to “beard” themselves on people consistently. Although patrons of the business were worried about the bees stinging them and affecting their baby's health, Emily assured them that if she could do it, they could do it.
Building Another Business
This business expanded to a point where people were only contacting Emily and Ryan for specific bee photo related inquiries. People were willing to pay top dollar prices to get their photos taken by the dynamic duo, but the couple had some other ideas in mind…
Everyone Wants Bees
They decided to stop allowing people to take photos with their bees! Even though this was a nice and consistent source of income, the couple didn’t want to be known as bee photographers, they were beekeepers first and foremost.
Nothing to Worry About
After the hype died down, Emily began regularly seeing a doctor and taking time off of her work to prepare to have her baby. The doctors theorized that there might be some complications with her birth due to the bee stings, but this was unlikely to greatly affect the process.
Welcome to the World
The birth went off without a hitch, Emily retorted to the nurses that she “gets stung so regularly that there is no way that would harm her very much. Although that sounds crazy, the doctors had nothing else to work off of.
Under the Hood
After she gave birth, Emily returned to beekeeping full time. She kept her newborn son closeby at all times, and sometimes she would strap him into a custom holster that she constructed inside of her bee suit.
No Requests Please
The Muellers occasionally took on more photography gigs when they needed a little extra cash. They would only allow close friends and family to be involved though, they no longer took requests from strangers.
The Best it Could Be
This was incredibly exciting for the family for more reasons than one would think. Emily had a history of having miscarriages, and this was her first birth after three attempts. This baby was a miracle.
Business is Buzzing
The bee business stayed busy. The couple sold more honey and beeswax than ever, they even had to buy some more space for the storage of their products.
Thanks to the Bees
In the end, the couple had to hire some more employees for their booming bee business. The demand for their honey, their beeswax, and the opportunity to talk to this lovely couple was higher than it ever was. All that can be accredited to those lovely bees.