Today was very exciting for us and we are very happy to introduce our newest location to all of you. Selecting and establishing a new bee yard is pretty important to us as we grow our hives and our business and we are happy to have found a great partner in the Marriott. We have been working on this partnership since last fall and at first, we weren’t sure it’d be a great location for the bees as it is not our typical setting that we normally select (we have a long list of folks with ranches, farms and just plain ole BIG texas country), but after Mark and David made a second visit to look around the land (a little farther away from the restaurant than the first site we looked at), we all decided to give it a go if the Marriott folks wanted to move forward. And here we are. Gretchen Bee Ranch bees in San Antonio. :-) Have to smile because it was my first home when I moved to Texas over fifteen years ago. I love SA.
This is Bethany, our primary contact for the resort. She is the Culinary Gardener and a lover of nature so we know the bees will have a wonderful guardian watching over them on our behalf. As we drove to the yard location, we were noting what was in bloom and we’re happy to see plenty of flowering trees and wildflowers that the bees can go after – Bluebonnets, Indian Blankets, Redbuds, Huisache and a lot of tiny flowers I don’t know the names of in varying colors of yellow and purple. We are happy to see this and hope the bees do well at the new yard.
We head back to the Marriott in a couple of weeks to check on the bees and make sure they are settling in okay. By the way they were flying out to forage within five minutes of having their entrances opened, we think they will be just fine. On our next visit, we will take some samples of honey and print materials for a display within the Cibolo Moon restaurant on site. Hopefully we’ll also be able to wrap in a meeting with the gift shop company at the hotel. With gas prices as high as they are, it’s always a great thing to be able to tie in multiple purposes when we make a trip into San Antonio. Good things we love SA! Y’all be sure to welcome our bees to SA if you’re golfing or enjoying the spa at the resort.
To view the full set of photos for this new bee yard, take a look at The JW Marriott SA Hill Country Bee Yard set in our Flickr collection.
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