We just got in from the honey house for the evening. We have been trying to finish up bottling and labeling local honey and when we finished that, we moved back to labeling boxes of specialty honeys. Man it is still hot out there. I was drenched by the time we called it a night. We also prepped for tomorrow morning’s beekeeping class as well as the 2011 Honey Harvest Sale Event from 4-8p here at the ranch on Krezdorn. More on that tomorrow.
This week we celebrated our tenth anniversary – yay us! I got the day off Wednesday and we had a super fab day together. I don’t think we’ve ever been more busy or more happy. Our big meeting was with a representative of HEB, which is the larger grocer in Texas for those of you not from here. It was so flattering and exciting to be contacted by them and asked for product information. We feel the initial meeting went well and we look forward to hearing from them after they do some number crunching. The process was so interesting. I told some friends that I felt as if I was in grade school and I was waiting my turn to have a project judged. 🙂 Not stressful, just suspenseful sort of. We entered the lobby of the headquarters in San Antonio, along with several other people and their products. The above picture was the only one I managed to snap since I didn’t think anyone would want me snappy pictures of them waiting their turn. That’s me sitting there with our bag of samples and sampler box we made just for the visit. They got to keep the sampler box. Lucky! We met two very nice men who were from New Mexico I believe. They were presenting a new package of beer that HEB already carries in some of their 300 stores. They gave us some input on their experience working with HEB and it was all positive. They said it was a “life changer” if you get to partner with the store. In a good way (when we asked which way they meant lol). So here’s to HEB and the possibilities. We’ll keep you posted!
Other work included Mark trekking out to the yards to check on the queens from Derwin Thrash of Mississippi. Great news – all queens were accepted AND some of them had already gotten super busy and had several frames of eggs laid. Mark was very, very pleased to see this. He’s ordered more queens from Derwin and will use them when he divides the remainder of the hives in September. Derwin was mentored by the awesome JN Russell. We still think of him and miss him dearly. Wish we could still visit and have a cup of tea and some of his pecan pie made from scratch. We are so glad to carry on with Derwin.
Gretchen Bee Ranch 
I can’t believe I’m just reading this now. Everytime I go to HEB I always check out their honey section and think wouldn’t it be cool to see the Gretchen honey on the shelves. I’d totally take pics and buy some too.