Holy smokes, folks. Guess what? We managed to bring back thirty-one (yes 31!) honey supers yesterday from Comanche Creek bee yard. Pretty late in the year for the bees to be making honey but no one here is complaining, that’s for sure. Though we are in September, the bees made the bulk of this honey in August so we’ll go with an August harvest. So cool! Comanche Creek Farm & Ranch is the yard west of San Antonio. The past two years had been pretty hard for the hives out there due to the extreme drought. We even moved half of them off the property despite our desire to partner with the super nice Anderson family. We left one of two bee yards intact and prayed for a better year. And it happened. That area has received so much rain this year that creeks we typically see dry are filled with water. There is green grass all along the dirt roads we normally meander on to get to the hives. Trees and brush are greener and fuller. Bees are happier, healthier and busier. So not only are they making an amazing amount of honey this year, the hives are just downright robust and that makes for a very happy beekeeper. Mark and I were talking yesterday about how it all hinges on nutrition. With the rains, things bloom. With the blooms, bees receive the nutrition they need to thrive. Man, what an amazing switch for them and we couldn’t be happier. Go bees! The above picture was shot last week when Tang, Mark and I went to see the bees on Labor Day. We had a lovely picnic under an oak tree and I even spotted a wild beehive right above us – heard the hum of the bees. Below is one of my favorite shots – Tang loves to photograph things as much as I do! LOL If I get my camera/phone out, he has to have a shot also. That is one of the many Cenizo bushes in bloom after the rains out in that area. The bees were buzzing all over the bushes and you could really hear them well. I saw many had full pollen buckets so we were all very happy for them and for us.
The honey pulled yesterday tastes like it has this Cenizo as well as Bee Brush in it. All I know is that it’s gorgeously light and tastes wonderful. How nice to have a slightly different variety to try out in a year when my favorite Mesquite honey didn’t get made!
And this is what the 31 honey supers look like in the Honey House – so awesome!
By the way, in case you don’t follow any of our other social media…we have official store hours now! It’s a start and we are pleased to be able to commit to it.
So…I don’t know how it got to be so long since I last posted. I kept wanting to and started and then something would come up that needed my attention. And then here we are. Sooooo much is going on that I get overwhelmed trying to decide what to tell you all so I suppose I should simply start somewhere. Anywhere.
This year has been an odd year for us and the bees! In April we thought the honey production was pretty much done and we were really a little blue about it. But then we took a trip to Florida to see family and when we got home, it became the beginning of on and off rainy spell that has continued until now. Amazing what a week can change. We went from worrying about how to make the little bit of honey stretch all year to having to wait and wait and wait while the bees continue to make honey. Great change in plan. We pulled honey supers twice now from our two farthest bee yards! The second round (just yesterday) yielded 42 supers and we could not be happier with our bees in Comanche Creek and Bigfoot. Good job girls!
Here’s a shot of Mark and my sister Thuy last week at Comanche Creek bee yard in Medina County. Those are the second round supers on the hives. We had gone out there to see how they were doing. We also measured moisture levels to confirm they supers were ready to pull.
During the past several weeks, we’ve also had a big development in our Pearl Farmers Market life. Mark was elected President of the Board of Directors for the market association and I will continue in my support role of Communications Liaison between the Board and association members. We have a lot to learn but we are excited to have a chance to be more involved with the continued growth and development of the market. Can’t wait to see what the future holds for us all there at the Pearl. What a lovely place to be! We are close to having permanent home for the market. Once the Pearl completes construction of the Hotel Emma and neighboring structure, the market will finally have a home we can grow into. Exciting! We continue to meet some fantastic friends at market and partnerships continue to grow for our little company. We are so thankful for all the opportunities afforded to us!
Finally, here’s another reason we got a little busier and more distracted – GO SPURS GO! Our marvelous Spurs made us so happy and proud. We are so thrilled we were able to go to different series games and got to see the final game and watch and be a part of the celebration at the arena. This team is amazing and we can’t wait to see what Tim Duncan’s 18th season will be like. Happy we get to see him another year at least!
I have a few minutes before we need to go to bed since it’s market day tomorrow morning. I didn’t realize we’ve hit February without a post – SORRY!!! It’s just been so hectic with the Honey House nearing finish, bees needing checking and feeding, beeswax to filter and pour, and the list goes on. Anyway, it’s been good!
The above picture is a shot I snapped out at Comanche Creek in Medina County, where we visited last Sunday. It’s one of my favorite pictures because it looks like the bee on the left is sipping on the straw. haha It was such a beautiful day, warm and sunny. After several days of cold weather, we all were ready to be outside and so were the bees. They looked great and we are hoping for just a bit of rain so things can really pop! And we were happy to see some Agarita about to bloom and a couple of other bushes we didn’t know the names of yet. We’ll have to see how they bloom and then maybe we’ll figure out what they are. This is what Agarita looks like and it’s also about to bloom out at Deadman Creek, as reported by Mark and Tang today.
And of course, since it is Valentine’s Day, I will say goodnight with a shot of a couple of the cards I made for my friends. I hope you had a wonderful day!
Here’s our entrance to the Bee Ranch. The two papers posted are permits from the City of Seguin so that we can be officially in our construction and so on. We also had people out to mark all the underground things we need to be aware of – it’s 811 if you need to schedule that, by the way.
After an evening of worry over a plumbing issue that Mark noticed Monday, we got moving again after a fairly painless resolution was found the next day. Phew. We continue to learn a LOT as we get the Honey House built (this is how I found Mark after dinner Monday night: Recalculating plumbing measurements). Boy, talk about an entirely new awareness and appreciation for building projects. Can’t even imagine the coordination and administrative work of a really gigantic warehouse. But maybe it’d be less stress if you had on-site help daily. We are thankful, however, that we have a good friend who is acting as our construction consultant. Thank you, Thomas!
This is a shot of some of the rebar that concrete will be poured onto soon. What’s really awesome is the fact that the rebar going into the HH foundation is from our local steel mill where I work (CMC Steel Texas). Go steelers! I don’t know why but that just made it extra special for me when I saw it on property and in the form. At lunchtime, the update was sounding really great: plumbing work is done for now, the foundation crew returned (yay) and then the electrician comes next. This is all so exciting and we really are hoping we’ll have enough done on the HH so that we can stage it a bit for Holiday Open House on December 8. Fingers crossed!
In bee news: Last week the Bigfoot bee yard bees did not look good at all. It really worried Mark to see their frames empty of honey already given that the area had rain recently. He expected to find more but since he didn’t, he started pulling together plans to feed the girls to sustain them until they can go at it on their own. Still trying to figure out why they went downhill like that. Fortunately, a visit to Comanche Creek yards assured us we weren’t about to lose all of those hives as well. Mark was happy to see #1 yard bee looking pretty good. #2 yard will need to be fed but at least they are all still there. He wants to get back out there as soon as possible to feed, but given this critical stage of construction, he needed to stay around the Bee Ranch. Measure twice, pour once…as a friend wrote to us. He is right. We need to get this right for the HH. 🙂
That’s it for now. Next post, I’ll share some shots and directions for the best baked persimmon dessert ever! 🙂 Ciao!
Okay, the NBA Finals are on and I need distractions. To say we are fans is to put it lightly. We LOVE our Spurs! And I am a little on the intense side and sometimes I have to multitask during games so I can break up the stress. 🙂 Poor Mark has to listen to a lot of commentary (I have an awesome husband!). And to think I never even wanted to watch pro-basketball when I was growing up – only college ball for me. Then my brother took me to a Spurs game and I was hooked! And the rest is history.
So, on to the bee news since we are up by 6 with under four minutes to go. Some bee yards are doing well while others are just okay. And in one bee yard, you can have a hive that is cranking out honey production like crazy while the one next to it just isn’t quite as productive. We’ve been wondering if there is ever going to be a sustained honey flow this year – they just had the oddest weather to work with this year. Well, this week has given us a bit more hope. We’ll take whatever they give us but more is always better, given that demand has grown so much. So here’s a rundown of this week’s visits.
That’s a shot from Bigfoot bee yard in Frio County. Last visit when Mark was there, there wasn’t much to write home about but today…nearly every hive had a super of honey on it. Nice! By the way, he also sent this great picture while there – can you guess the significance of the ranch name? I loved it when he explained it. 🙂
Here’s yard #1 at Comanche Creek. A little on the dry side but it can always be worse. We’re thinking we may move this location since any rain looks like it’d come right through part of the yard and may wash away hives. We certainly don’t want that risk. I think Mark has already scoped out possible new spots.
The #2 yard is hanging in there and we’re hoping it will pick up again but as I always say, “It can always be worse.” At least we’re not losing bees and at least we have SOME honey in the supers. The girls were busy and barely took notice of us while we were there. I didn’t even have to put on my full suit and that’s always nice. Especially when it’s 95F degrees and feels 100F. Hot. Pretty amazing because when we checked the weather, it was 87F in Seguin. What a big difference. Trust me, you can definitely feel those extra degrees. In my next post, I’ll share a couple other pictures and a video I shot of how the bees keep cool in the heat. I don’t want to overload this entry with too much information.
There was a lot of this beautiful brush down at Comanche Creek. I like this shot a lot because of the fantasy feel of the white bee brush – it was blooming everywhere and smelled wonderful and sweet. It was great to see the bees all over the place and that there was food aplenty this trip. While we’ve had some rain, it is still pretty hot and pretty dry. Typical Texas weather so it’s always going to be a challenge if you’re in farming and/or have livestock. Also in bloom down there and with on the blooms included plants such as the wild persimmon, sprinklings of yellow wildflowers (several varieties), Huajilla still holding on and some Mesquite as well. Plenty for them to choose from but the key is that it’s sustainable. The bees need the blooms to be prolonged and then they can continue the honey flow better than the previous stop-and-go blooming. We’ll hope it continues to go well for the bees there.
On our way home, we stopped by the last sunflower field with any upright blooms left but I was happy to find any. And as a reward, there was a chubby, cute little wild bee on the bloom. She was so stout and adorable and not bothered by me whatsoever. This is my second year missing the peak bloom time so here’s to next season!
We didn’t get a shot from Deadman Creek but Mark did check on them and had to add four more supers so that’s great news! We are hopeful that this will be sustained for a while so that they girls can keep on making the honey. Can’t wait to see what the harvest will be like this year. We anticipate harvest will begin in a week or so…pretty soon. Stay tuned.
I don’t know if you noticed it Sunday but not only was it rumbling thunder and flashing lightning all across the lovely Texas sky, but we also had morning temperatures in the upper 60s. Yes. You read right – upper 60s. As a matter of fact, when we set up shop at the Quarry market, we both noted it was a bit on the chilly side. I actually had a light rain jacket on and Mark was on the chilled side with the constant wind and being in short sleeves. This has got to be the strangest Texas spring/summer I’ve seen in the 16 years I’ve lived here. Up and down and back up again in temperatures – it’s no wonder the flowers don’t know what’s going on, which impacts how the bees make honey. As I have mentioned before, if there isn’t a consistent bloom season, then the bees don’t have enough flowers to get a great honey flow going. So far, we are seeing a little improvement in honey production but it’s still spotty to be honest and the total production numbers should be interesting to compare to the past couple of years. 2010 and 2011 were drought years so we didn’t get much honey production while 2012 was a bumper crop year. Let’s see what 2013 will yield.
Today Mark went to Elm Creek, which is pictured above. That is white bee brush you see next to the hives and the bees love that and so do we. It has the loveliest, sweetest scent and when Mark showed it to me in full bloom one year, I was so in love with it. It was like a summer snow dusting on the ground at Elm Creek. I still remember stepping out of the truck and just soaking in the fragrant air. Loved it. The bee brush typically blooms several days after a rain and when it blooms abundantly, then that is a real boost to the bees’ honey production. Wednesday we’ll go out to Comanche Creek to see how the brush did out there and whether it gave the bees a bit of a boost at all. We’ll report back afterwards.
After Elm Creek and some work at The Farm yards, Mark headed out to Gonzales. While they still aren’t doing much at the Gonzales yard, the Pizza yard bees were looking a little better and making a bit of honey. This is a shot of one of the fields Mark drove through on his way to the Pizza bees – good sign for the girls – that’s a lot of horsemint to munch on and that’s a great sight to see! Like bee brush, horsemint has a light, sweet fragrance and is a great bee food so we are pleased to see it growing like this. It’s also nice to not have to worry about someone mowing it all down like we have seen in some areas. Always breaks my heart a bit when I see beautiful fields of wildflowers mowed down. Well, we shall remain hopeful that these blooms will continue for a while so that the girls can get a steady honey flow going.
In other news, we have joined another farmers market – Southtown Farmers & Ranchers Market, which will be located at the cool Blue Star Arts Complex! This Saturday morning market formally kicks off on June 15 although we won’t be able to join them until June 22 since we will be out of town for our daughter’s wedding. If you are looking for the same Sunday morning atmosphere of the Quarry market, then you’ll want to come visit us and the other vendors at the Blue Star. This market is coordinated by the same dynamic duo who run the Quarry market – Heather and David. As a webpage is developed, I will be sure to share it with you. Meanwhile, you can find the market on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/SouthtownFarmersMarket.
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!
Hello friends! Hope everyone’s had a great week and hope our San Antonio friends are enjoying the cooler weather for all their Fiesta festivities. 🙂 Fiesta is pretty much a week-long party in the city of SA for those of you who haven’t experienced one. It’s a lot of fun!
In market news, we have two events happening Saturday. Mark and I will kick off at the Pearl as usual but then Jessica and Sonia will take over for us so we can head over to The Shops at La Cantera from 12-4p. If you are in either areas, then we hope you’ll stop by to say hello. Earlier this week I did a dry-run of the display for the Williams-Sonoma event since we are limited to one 6-ft table but allowed to bring any of our products, including the ever popular specialty honeys, honey dippers and honey pots. Yep. Honey samples WILL be provided. 🙂
Speaking of honey. Did you see that lovely frame up above? I shot that one while out at Comanche Creek with Mark on my day off – what a gorgeous place to visit and wow, are the bees doing great out there! They are making some light Huajilla Honey and we were thrilled to have Mark use up all the honey supers he took with him. I believe he said he could have used a few more. So it’s a good thing he is heading back out there today (minus me…boooo!) to check on things. Luckily (or not), we did not encounter Mr. Rattler as I’m now calling him – that big ole rattlesnake Stan and Mark saw last time they were out there together.
Okay, since many people seem to want to know what it’s like in a bee yard and some want to go with us and since we can’t accommodate all the requests, I thought I could at least shoot a video for y’all. This is at Comanche Creek #2 (remember we have two locations on that ranch) and the bees were flying beautifully that day. I was in full gear only because I was all over the place and right up on the entrances shooting pictures and videos and I didn’t want any stings slowing me down. Otherwise, most anyone else would have done fine with just a veil like Mark. The bees were just simply too busy foraging and making honey. What a lovely sight it was.
In other related news – we finally, officially own the property attached to our little Bee Ranch on the back side. WOO HOO! This means signing papers and checks and then a celebratory dinner where I didn’t have to cook (even though I do love to cook, that was nice). Of course, over dinner, we had the beginnings of a deep discussion that will continue I’m sure. What exactly do we want to do with that land? How will we build? How big or small will it be? What operations do we want it to support and how long might we want to do this? 🙂 I told Mark I really want to retire at some point (and him too of course) and travel and see places we talk about – both here in the states and abroad. Heck, I can’t wait to get back to the Outer Banks in NC! Love that place. Anyway. We need to figure some things out before we break ground. But what a relief to have this really long, unexpectedly long process (almost) completed. Just waiting on other signatures and so on. We’ll update y’all on things as they develop but this bit of news is big for this project that laid dormant for so long. YAY!
Does anyone know what this might be? Our friend suggested Crabapple but if it is, then it is of a very small variety compared to the typical bloom. All we know is that it is abundant out at Comanche Creek and our bees seem to LOVE it. They were all over it when I went with Mark last Friday – which, by the way, was one of my best days off ever! Even though it now seems long ago, it still makes me happy to think I got to kick off a 3-day weekend hanging out with my most awesome beekeeping husband! It was a beautiful day here – cool enough to sit out back with a customer for a bit while we waited for Mark to bring back a few nucs for pick-up. I packed a lunch and we headed to Comanche Creek after that. I always enjoy riding around with Mark because you never know what we’ll see or who we get to meet! There’s always an adventure out there if you just are open to it. I love being with him.
Anyway, enough of the mushy stuff, I’m sure you’re thinking. Okay so today Mark went out to CC again to feed the bees. He wants them really nice and strong as can be before the Huajilla blooms in earnest. And they send pictures home of a big ole rattlesnake. Another one in our life is not my idea of nice. One in the back yard is still worrisome (along with a den we still need to deal with eventually) but the one they saw was as big as a man’s forearm. Too big for me. They heard him when they were opening the third gate to get to the bee yards on the ranch. 😦 Very worrisome that we are going to continue to run into more of them. And to think all these years we’ve gone without seeing any. And now two within two weeks. Eeeks. Snake boots and a gun. Mandatory gear for a while I think. Mark told me when we recapped our day that there might be a market for these rattlers if he and Stan catch them. WHAT?? I hope he’s kidding.
Guess what – it’s finally coming down hard here at the Bee Ranch! How exciting! I won’t have to water yet, which is always nice but even nicer is that it will be a great boost for our bees. Yay rain! You wouldn’t believe how often we all check the forecasts and radars. lol
Let’s see what else is going on – bee checks and feedings, that’s what. We moved several more hives out to CC so it’s proving to be one of our larger yards. Still amazing to us to be on a ranch that big and have two separate yards in which to place the bees. Still more amazing is that every time we go out there, we get to see amazing beauty. We feel so incredibly blessed when we experience that!
I have so many things I want to show you from out there. Here’s CC #2 yard, named #2 only because we scouted the location second during our very first visit.
They were flying like crazy out there. The hum of the bees was amazing. I’m glad I was fully suited as a couple of girls got irritable since it turned cloudy and a bit breezy. And if you missed it on Facebook, here’s a video I captured while at CC #1. Be sure to watch the HD version so it’s a better picture. I shoot it in HD but the default setting for YouTube viewing is less than that so you have to manually choose it. If there’s a way to change that default, you can tell me. 🙂
While at CC #1, I also saw beautiful Bluebonnets that I just had to shoot.
I saw a few bees in there and I captured a couple of shots though none good enough to share in my opinion. Their buzzing, however, did lead me to find them not on the flowers, but on the ground taking in water at the end of the tank. Funny little girls. They need lots of water so we are happy the tanks levels are still up at this time. The tank is just down the hill from the yard location so it’s perfect for the bees.
Here’s another shot I really liked – check out her pollen basket! So cool. At this point, dressed in my full suit on top of my jeans, boots and so on, I was level with the entrance and could enjoy watching them coming and going for quite some time. It was nice to feel secure in my suit and not be a bother to them. They are just so fascinating to watch. Sometimes they tumble a bit when they land, which is hilarious. I also saw at another hive that there were several bee fights going on as they rob from each other sometimes when we feed them. Silly girls, they sure cracked me up jumping on each other and rolling right off the landing of then entrance.
Okay, one more. I told Mark I noticed the gigantic red ants were nearby and I tracked their huge home up at the top of the hill. It was huge. And they do bite and it does sting and I do swell a bit. FYI – don’t think they are harmless. Anyway, he later called to me and showed me a hilarious sight – here’s why we don’t mind the ants in bee yards.
That little ant just chugged along with his hive beetle larvae. He had a long way to go up that hill but I watched him and snapped his progress. It was so interesting! He moved faster than you’d think. And then I saw this other ant headed the same way; really, you cannot help but see them because they are HUGE. Anyway, the second ant had half a bee (our bee!) and was headed home. For some reason, this just really fascinated me. It was like a race and the hive beetle ant was beating the bee ant by a long shot. It was fun to watch them and this was all just a fraction of the fun I had that day at Comanche Creek with Mark. 🙂 I am a lucky, happy girl.
If you would like to see more pictures of our Comanche Creek bee yards, you can swing over to our Flickr photo set and enjoy. 🙂
Our friend Beth asked what a drone looks like so I thought I’d show y’all a picture. This big boy was at the Coyote bee yard and he is conveniently close to the female workers so that you can see the size difference. He’s seriously big. 🙂 It is warming up nicely these days here in Seguin. Today was in the mid-70s and tomorrow will be in the high-70s and Mark said they are starting to build up drone cells in the hives now. That’s par for the course for the spring so we shall see if we have any more cold weather left.
Today Mark and Pete fed and treated bees in the Deadman Creek bee yard. Some hives look great while a few looked subpar. There’s just not much in bloom out at that bee yard at this time for the girls so we’ll have to hope they make it. Mark will likely combine some of them to strengthen them a bit. Tomorrow, Mark and Lan head out to Comanche Creek to check on and tend to the girls. Wish I could go with them!
I’m sorry we’ve been absent here. A lot has happened in life and we’ve been doing our thing. If you’re on Instagram… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… tweeted 3 years ago
Check out the 100% cotton wick in action during last night’s burn of our y’all round pillar candle. Shot with… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… tweeted 3 years ago
Gretchen Bee Ranch 