Erika Thompson: Beekeeper and Founder of Texas Beeworks

Second Life

Clique Media, Female Founder, Entrepreneurship, Career Change, Career Pivot, Fashion & Beauty, Hillary Kerr, Personal Journals, Who What Wear, Clique, Career, Arts, Business, Careers, Second Life, Career Advice, Self-made, Entrepreneur, Mydomaine, Society & Culture

4.7 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 6 January 2025

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Erika Thompson is a beekeeper, bee advocate, and founder of the bee removal services company Texas Beeworks. Erika grew up in Texas loving all things animals and bugs. She studied geography at the University of Texas at Austin, and after a brief stint as a vet tech, embarked on a career in communications. She worked at several different nonprofit organizations over the years, but despite the impact she was making, she didn’t love sitting at a desk every day. In 2012, she signed up for a beekeeping class as a fun outlet. But from that first class, she was hooked. She started keeping bees herself and eventually began offering humane bee removal services to people in the Austin area. In 2018, she left the world of communications to commit to being a beekeeper full-time. In 2020, she made another major career move when she began posting videos of her bee removals on TikTok. Her passionate, kind, fascinating storytelling immediately resonated with others, and her audience grew quickly. Today, she has over 11 million followers, and several of the videos of her bee removals (which she still does for free!) have over 100 million views.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi everyone. I'm Hillary Kerr, the co-founder and chief content officer of Who What Where, and this is Second Life, a podcast spotlighting women who have truly inspiring careers.
0:18.6	We're talking about their work journeys, what they've learned from the
0:21.7	process of setting aside their doubts or fears, and what happens when they embark on their
0:27.6	second life. Today on the show, I'm speaking with the founder of Texas Bee Works, Erica Thompson.
0:35.2	Have you ever seen those beekeeping videos where a woman calmly scoops bees out of a hole in the wall with her bare hands?
0:43.4	That is Erica.
0:45.5	She is a tremendously talented, passionate bee advocate and probably the best known beekeeper on the internet right now.
1:00.0	But before any of that, Erica was a young girl growing up in Texas who just loved bugs. Life took her to UT Austin where she studied geography,
1:03.0	and after college she spent a few years as a vet tech.
1:07.0	She then embarked on a career in communications at various nonprofits.
1:12.1	In 2012, she was looking for an outlet that had nothing to do with work.
1:16.6	So she enrolled in a beekeeping class and got hooked.
1:21.1	She began keeping bees on her own and in 2014 founded Texas Bee Works.
1:27.1	For a few years, she juggled her communications director role with this other side of her life,
1:32.1	removing rogue hives from backyards.
1:35.2	In 2018, she decided to go full time with Texas BeeWorks already a monumental step in her second life.
1:43.1	But the next huge shift came in 2020 when she started
1:46.5	posting videos of her bee removals on TikTok. Her passionate, kind, and fascinating storytelling
1:54.0	immediately resonated and her audience grew quickly. Today, she has over 11 million followers, and many of her videos have over
2:04.5	100 million views. This was a fascinating interview. Erica is someone who is able to get back
2:11.5	to her roots in adulthood, and she's definitely someone we could all learn a thing or two from.
2:18.7	Now, on Second Life, it's Erica Thompson.
	...

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