After the Extraction

That could mean so much, right? I usually think of two things when I hear “extraction” (before GBR, of course): teeth pulling and a military maneuver of some sort. Too many David Baldacci and James Rollins novels. Anyway, the extraction we now are consumed with around here is that of honey. Gosh, what a sweet honey it is this year! Some people have asked us what we’re doing now that the extraction is done. Well, there’s still a lot of work to be completed before the honey is ready for purchase. First we need to do something with all the emptied supers that aren’t going to be used for additional honey-making so Mark and David have been putting them out at the bee yards for the bees to clean up – they’ll go after all the residual honey left on the boxes and frames. It’s amazing how clean the girls can get those things. The shot above is Mark opening up the entrance to Big Oaks; I got to go with him yesterday evening after dinner. I wanted to see what the skies would be like since we had the edge of a storm blow through. Unfortunately, we got very little rain. But I did get to see some lovely clouds and a very nice sunset. So, it was Tuesday and the boxes that he put in Big Oaks today should be clean by the weekend. He’s going to come back and check on things and we’ll report back to you.

Okay, I had to take a break because we had printer issues and that consumed the time I was going to post. So here we go with getting this done before bed. I would really like to hit the hay before midnight tonight. That would be nice. Okay, so this evening we went back out to Big Oaks as well to Deadman Creek because we had some guests here at the Bee Ranch – the San Antonio Pearl Farmers Market representatives! Bryan and Rhonda were so nice and we instantly felt at ease with them. They farm and are also part of the market. Part of the application process is a site visit so that the market organizers know how you operate and that you actually produce what you sell. Sounds great to us! We really like the process and the trouble they go to in order to ensure quality vendors at the market. Nice. The visit went well – we showed them the Honey House and explained extraction, bottling and the beeswax portion of GBR. Then we made quick visits to Big Oaks (where there was a swarm and bees were flying everywhere – sort of like La Guardia or O’Hare) and opened up a hive at Deadman Creek. What pretty yards they are. We were hoping to get to the Pizza yard but it we were losing light. Here’s a shot of Bryan and Mark sampling some honey straight from a frame. At dusk, the bees were a bit irritated but that was not unexpected. Still, Bryan and Rhonda said they enjoyed the visit and we did also. Let’s hope we hear some good news on that front soon! We are super thrilled at the possibility of getting into the SA area and building our customer base there. It’ll be a big commitment for us – every Saturday of the year. So…we better start lining up some help in case one or both of us can’t make it for some reason.

Oh, before I leave I wanted to show you a picture of the HH as it is now after a bit of cleaning by Mark and Belinda. There’s still honey in funny places and I spent about an hour wiping down surfaces that were sticky. Even my little CD player/radio was cover in honey! Lesson learned for NEXT time – COVER EVERYTHING WITH PLASTIC. lol