Who I am and Why I started Bee Friendly

My name is Anthony DeSantis, but my friends call me Tony. I grew up in Newburyport and I've spent most of my career in the lawn care and pest control industry. But Bee Friendly didn't start with a business plan. It started with a customer named Paul, a wake-up call about pesticides I'd been applying for years, and eventually getting the rug pulled out from under me one too many times.

I got my start in 2012 as a lawn care technician at a large traditional lawn care company. The job required me to get licensed as a pesticide applicator in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine. I took the job seriously. In my first season I had a customer named Paul who came out pretty aggressively the first time I showed up at his property. He'd been disappointed with his results the year before and wasn't shy about it. I told him that while I was new to lawn care, I was there to do the best job I possibly could and I'd treat his property like it was my own. He looked at me and said, “we'll see”.

I stuck to my word all season. His lawn started flourishing, and over time Paul went from skeptical to genuinely happy to see me. We stopped talking about the lawn and started talking about life. At some point he invited me into the painting studio on his property to show me his work, which was how he made his living. At the end of the season Paul hand wrote a letter to the company expressing his gratitude for the work I did and the friendship we'd formed. He tucked a hundred dollar bill inside. The money meant a lot at the time, but the letter meant more. That experience shaped how I've approached every customer relationship since.

I eventually moved into sales, where I developed my own approach. I had no interest in selling someone something they didn't need. If you tell me you have a problem and I have a solution that works for you at the right price, we're in business. If not, no hard feelings, have a great day. It worked. Over three years I sold over a million dollars in services and felt like I had finally found my footing. Then the company was acquired and I was let go the same day.

I was very fortunate to land a new job within two weeks, and it changed everything. This company was small, family owned, and had a focus on organic lawn care and pest control. It was here that I learned that imidacloprid, an active ingredient in lawn care products I'd been applying and selling for years, had been linked to colony collapse disorder in bees. And it wasn't just lawn care products. Bifenthrin, a synthetic pyrethroid commonly used for mosquito and tick control, is also highly toxic to bees and pollinators. I'd been applying and selling that too. I still remember the moment I realized all of this. I'd been out there doing my job, doing it well, and unknowingly contributing to the decline of bee populations. I felt like I'd been a merchant of death without knowing it.

That company was different. They cared about the environment, about pollinators, and about doing things the right way. I became passionate about organic alternatives in a way I hadn't expected. I started as their only salesperson, eventually built a small sales team, and together we helped grow the business from $300,000 in annual revenue to $1,600,000 in three years. I was proud of what we accomplished and I felt at home there. Then the owners went through a divorce, and things started to unravel. They told me they couldn't afford to pay me anymore despite the growth.

After that I took a technician role at a large corporate company. Organic lawn and pest control companies are few and far between, so going back to conventional chemical treatments was essentially unavoidable. I needed a job. The environment there couldn't have been further from how I'd always approached the work in the past. It was all about how fast you could get through a property and how much revenue you could bill in a day. Talking to customers, answering questions, making sure the job was done right for each individual property, none of that was valued. I was ready to get out.

A smaller local company, who had organic options and had removed both imidacloprid and bifenthrin from their programs, offered me a path back into sales, but the catch was I'd need to work as a technician for a season first. Here I was eleven years into my career and I was back at square one again. I took the deal anyway because the promise of getting back into sales felt worth it and because the company shared my values on organics. At first it seemed like the right fit, good people who cared about doing the job well. But over time the true colors of the business started to show, and when the sales offer finally came, I had the sense the business was headed somewhere I didn't want to follow. It turns out I was right. At some point I realized the only way to have any control over my own future was to build something myself. So I did. In January of 2025 I started Bee Friendly.

The name means a few things to me. It means being friendly to bees, pollinators, and the ecosystem we all depend on. It means being friendly to customers, treating every property with the same care I'd give my own, the same promise I made to Paul back in 2012. And it means being friendly to the people I hope to hire one day. If I build a team, I want working for Bee Friendly to mean having a real career, not just a job.

I started this business because I got tired of watching good work go unrewarded and good intentions get overlooked. If you hire Bee Friendly, you're hiring me. I'll be the one on your property, and I'll treat it like my own. That's not a marketing line. It's just how I work.

If any of this resonates with you, I'd love to earn your trust the same way I earned Paul's.

Tony

Bee Friendly Organic Mosquito and Tick Control