Today was the last of my four-day weekend that I took to celebrate my mom’s first year anniversary of her passing and my birthday. It has been an incredible weekend and the most awesome time ever. 🙂 We made a quick trip to see my family in Florida and that was after a bee class Saturday morning (our last until September). Today has been fantastic and I am so happy I finally got to see the new bee yard at Cibolo Creek. This is only our second yard in Bexar County so we are excited to have a number of hives now on a property packed with gorgeous wildflowers – a literal buffet of the most beautiful flowers a honeybee could ask for so they can (hopefully) make some of the most delicious honey ever. We are so hopeful the recent rains will keep the blooms coming so that the bees can regain footing in honey production. Keep your fingers crossed! Here’s one of my favorite things today – being quiet and listening for the bees among the flowers. I found many of them on the Indian Blankets. Remember how awesome that tasted this past season? This flower makes a fabulously light honey, both in color and taste. So, we are very happy to see plenty of these flowers at the new yard and plenty of bees on them.
Mark drove me around after he checked and put a few supers on the hives and we marveled at the variety of flowers on that property – it was amazing! Indian Blankets, Horsemint, Thistle, Mexican Hats, just to name a few right off the top of my head. It was so nice to see the Horsemint in bloom so abundantly again. It’s one of my favorite flowers because of it’s unique structure. It always reminds me of a cake. Or a cascading waterfall. Or a Fred Astaire movie with all the fancy dancers. 🙂 Love it.
And then we drove through one field and saw this.
The first thing we said to each other was, “Uh oh…hope they aren’t plowing this field.” That would be such a shame for the bees. That entire field is packed with “bee food” so we hope the two plowed lanes we saw will remain just two.
After we had our fill of Cibolo Creek yard, Mark took me to Elm Creek to check on one of his best yards at this time. The hives there are doing so well in terms of health, productivity and honey production. This is one of our original bee yards and while it is a little cramped, we still love how well the bees do there. I enjoyed the sweet scent of the white Bee Brush that was in bloom out there. Bees love the beautiful Bee Brush and it blooms after a rain typically. We’ve been blessed with weekly rains – not much but enough to keep things blooming. We are expecting another light rain tonight. What a crazy but wonderful spring it has been this year!
And finally, I just want to say a big ole THANK YOU to my busy honey bee for making this one of the very best birthdays ever! Thank you for taking time out to go to FL with me and then grilling for me and just being so good to me. You are such a blessing to me and everyone in our families!! We all love you so much!
Gretchen Bee Ranch 
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