About Us

An Honest Statement About Me and This Company 

Birds and Beeswax LLC is owned and operated by me, Raven Niles. I'm a psychiatric nurse practitioner in my day-to-day life, and I believe that self care and the little things in life that bring us pleasure and satisfaction are critical to mental health and good quality of life. For me, that looks like having an outlet for my slightly cheeky, creative, and risk-taking entrepreneurial side.

Why Beeswax?

Having healthy bee populations to pollenate food crops is necessary for everyone's wellbeing. Providing a market for bee-related products helps support my local beekeeping industry, which supports local agriculture and is critical to local food production.

Why Food Wraps?

Reducing the use of plastics in our lives just makes sense to me. The more we learn about the effects of plastics on our bodies and brains, and the stories we hear about plastics filling up our oceans just makes me want to avoid the use of plastics in my kitchen as much as possible.

Finally, A Statement About Culture Wars and Politics

My husband Deven and I live on opposite-yet-adjoining sides of the political divide in the United States in many ways. The last 7 years or so have been a challenge to our marriage, but we love each other, provide space for each other to have differing opinions, and most of all, try not to take ourselves too seriously.  There's enough physical and ideological space in this world for a whole spectrum of ideas. I find that rainbow-colored food wraps exist quite comfortably in my kitchen drawer right next to ones that are decorated with  camouflage patterns. My main goal is to bring a little humor to something as mundane as wrapping up our food, because I think humor is something that has the power to bring people together.

I hope that people in the United States can someday remember that we all have a lot more in common than the things that separate us. We all want a safe place to live. We want access to healthy food and water that we can afford to buy. We want a hard day's work to result in a wage that supports a decent life. It is within our power to have all of these things, if we just remember how to work together to achieve them.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk. ;-)

Raven