Hello there and where did the week go? Anybody know? It sure has flown by and Saturday is the kickoff to June. Lordy. Well, since I last wrote, we got a LOT of rain, in case you don’t follow us on Twitter and Facebook. 6.25 inches – from Friday to Sunday afternoon. Wow. It was crazy but terribly exciting! It may sound like we should be over the drought but we have a long way to go before we do that. And it may also sound like the bees should be making honey like crazy, right? I mean look around – the countryside and highways are packed with all sorts of late season wildflowers. Well…it’s just not that easy. It’s been such a wonky spring – up and down in temperatures. Rain. No rain. It warms up. Things bloom and then the bees get a honey flow going. Then bam, a cool front. Flowers stop blooming or drop off because it got too cold. The bees then don’t have flowers to sustain the honey flow. They stop making honey. So that’s been a pattern we saw repeated several times this spring and it’s taking a toll in honey production this year. Not sure how much we’ll get but it won’t be in the quantity we got last year, that’s for sure. We’ll keep you posted.
Once things started drying up a bit, Mark made his way around the different bee yards and there is a good honey flow at some yards and in some hives. Here’s a shot of a Deadman Creek yard, where eight out of eleven hives needed honey supers yesterday.
And I also wanted to share a picture of some white bee brush that should be in full bloom within the week, which should really spur the bees at Comanche Creek to get a honey flow going. This is a promising sign so Mark will be going back out there mid-week next week to see how they are doing. If you’ve never seen or smelled bee brush, then let me tell you it is one of the sweetest scents I’ve ever smelled and it can make you smile in delight no matter how bad your day has been up to that point. Really. It’s an amazing flower and yet one of the very smallest I’ve ever seen.
In Honey House news – we actually received some plans this morning and Mark likes the proposal! Just last night we were talking about how slow things sometimes move and how you don’t always receive what you think you should get when you think you should get it. But I guess this whole thing is teaching us more patience. I thought I’d come a long ways but I guess I still have a ways to go in that department. At any rate, we got some things to look over and then we’ll decide what next. In the meantime, we did get water run to the Candle Shop (yay – no more sticky everywhere!) and if the honey production is as low as we think it will be, then it’s likely we may be able to extract in that tiny little space (this will make us appreciate the final HH even more than we thought possible when we extracted last year in the tiny space!). We’ll see how things shape up soon enough.
Finally, to the libray we go. Yesterday I made a lovely little gift basket for our friends at the Seguin Public Library. It’s going to be a raffle prize for the adult summer reading program so be sure you register starting Saturday! I will be since there are other great prizes in addition to our Bee Wrangler basket. Go by and tell them GBR sent ya. [Trivia: Did you know Mark and I met while we both worked as librarians? Really! And Mark was director at Seguin library for several years – good times.] Here are our friends at the library, Jacki and Silvia, receiving the Bee Wrangler I delivered. Hi, ladies! I hope you get LOTS of people to sign up to read, read, read!
Gretchen Bee Ranch 
Nice to see you going to the library – I’m a librarian too 🙂
I do recall learning that somewhere along the way. 🙂 Love the small coincidences that make our world feel smaller.