LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Fourteen-year-old Keith Griffith III knows all the buzz about honey bees. 

“During the wintertime, the bees will all get in a little cluster. After the queen is in the middle, they started vibrating with each other and they get to a high temperature of heat so they keep the queen warm, and they can stay warm throughout the winter,” Griffith explained.  

He’s been raising and breeding his own honeybees for three years. 

Griffith has sold thousands of bottles of raw and authentic honey over the past three years through his beekeeping business, Beeing2gether.

Griffith used the money he raised selling honey to attend his dream school, Trinity High School, until an anonymous donor covered tuition for him. 

Griffith's raw honey, soaps, and others products can be found at a growing list of stores and restaurants around Louisville and Lexington and even online. (Spectrum News 1/Ashley N. Brown)

The 9th grader plays basketball, enjoys gaming and four-wheeling, and plans to try out for Trinity’s football team.

But life hasn’t always been as sweet as the young beekeepers’ honey.  

“My parents were both incarcerated and stuff, so I was moving between my grandma’s house and my uncles as an 11, 10-year-old boy going through all that it was difficult,” Griffith said. 

Griffith’s father has been behind bars since he was two and at age 10, his mother served a one-year sentence.

That’s when his interest in bees sparked, and he used beekeeping to cope. 

“I did it when I went through it. It was fun, so I didn’t really think about what happened around me. I was just enjoying what I was doing at that time,” Griffith added. 

Beeing2gether’s mission is to encourage others to discover things they enjoy, to get through hard times and save the bees. 

“My vision of beekeeping, of course, [is to] help out the bees population because at some point they went almost went extinct. So helping out with that and also just having fun doing the beekeeping,” said Griffith. 

His raw honey, soaps and others products can be found at a growing list of stores and restaurants around Louisville and Lexington including Rainbow Blossom, Black Market, The Feulery, Blue Dog Bakery and Cafe, Black Soil of Lexington, Value Market and even online at Farm Plus. 

“It feels good to be inside a grocery store. I am working on getting into more grocery stores. I’ll have to work hard for that,” Griffith said. 

The challenging chapter that led to the start of his business is finally ending, and his colony will soon be complete again.

After 13 years, his father has been released from prison.

Griffith is a 2021 recipient of the Kurt Giessler Foundation’s Ambition Grant for exploring beekeeping as a way to improve his mental health and the Prize for Achievement for establishing Beeing2gether. (Spectrum News 1/Ashley N. Brown)

“I can’t wait to get down there and be with you physically. Get bossed around, let you boss me around,” Keith Griffith II said. 

Once the paperwork process is complete, Beeing2gether will have a whole new meaning.

Griffith is a 2021 recipient of the Kurt Giessler Foundation’s Ambition Grant for exploring beekeeping to improve his mental health, and the Prize for Achievement for establishing Beeing2gether. 

Griffith is the first recipient to win both of the foundation awards. 

In 2019, with the help of his dad, Griffith published “Honeybees and Beekeeping: A Mental Health Miracle.”

For information on purchasing the book, Beeing2gether products or to learn more about honeybees visit beeing2gether.com.