Alayna Bowman
English 1109 at 1:30, Mon- Wed
18 November 2020
Research Response Exercise
Out of all the very interesting profiles we have read, I decided to look into the one I knew the least about. Ted Dennard’s profile is very interesting to me because he has a different job that most people would not like to do. When he was thirteen, a man named Roy Hightower began to teach Ted and his father how to be a beekeeper in exchange for a beeyard. Once Ted opened up his first beehive and heard the sounds of all the bees and saw the colors of the honey, he knew he was going to continue doing this work. Once Roy died, Ted took over his bee farm. A quote in this profile that stuck out to me was when he said, “ It’s better to get a sting. I sort of kept a rough count, but when I got to, I guess, twenty thousand stings, I quit counting” (Isay 188). This quote stood out to me because he loves what he does even though he gets stung thousands of times. I admire that he found a calmness in a swarm of bees.
Ted is now a honey salesman. I wanted to look more into this because it accidentally happened after he sold a few jars of his honey to a store. Ted had no previous business experience so he just had to learn as he went. I decided to research his brand name for his honey and where it is sold. I also wanted to see how much he sold and how much money he made after these sales. I found out that Ted has a company called Savannah Bee Company and they sell honey/ honey based products, books, beauty products, beverages, and candles. His products can be found anywhere even places like Target and Walmart. They can also be found at on of the fourteen Savannah Bee Company stores around the country. I wasn’t able to find out much about how much he sells and makes but I was able to find out that he started a non profit called The Bee Cause Project where they put glass beehives in classrooms. In the article I read, the author interviewed Ted about his organization and he asked how to schools responded to it. He said, “The kids loved it. That was four years ago and now there’s 320 in all 50 states that have these educational beehives” ( Pellot 1). Ted has become very successful today and is still trying to grow and learn more.
Research Link
This passage was interesting to me. I feel like this job is more of a job for kids if that makes sense. The excitement to is as a kid carried over to him as an adult I felt like, and was nostalgic.
ReplyDeleteI think it cool that he was able to make such a successful business out of something that he loves doing.It is also really cool that hes is trying to get the next generation into this, Like Roy did for him.
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