Remembrance & Queens

Hope today’s going well so far for everyone. It’s a somber day in our history but it’s also an chance for me to stop and think about so many blessings we have, so many freedoms and choices and opportunities here in our great country.

We’ve made many trips to the New York area to see Mark’s family when they lived up there. We always enjoyed going into the City to sightsee and for Mark to do some research on his ballplayer, Smokey Joe Williams. It’s a really special place up there and our hearts are with all who have been personally impacted by what happened twelve years ago. But when you think about it, who can say they honestly haven’t felt impacted in some way by that great loss? I am trying to focus some positive energy into thinking about how our country came together during that time and I hope and pray that I see that again, without a tragedy to bring it about. Wouldn’t that be amazing? These are just a couple of my favorite images from a past trip to NY City.

Not that this is as important when you put it in perspective, but we must carry on with work and life, right? So here’s some news from the beeworld – we are still waiting on UPS Freight to get us our special order jars for the creamed honey. But at least the USPS came through today and got us the Olivarez queens we order the other day.

Mark’s already got them checked in at the Queen Bank Hotel. That man is a busy bee for sure!

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An Evening in the Fentress Countryside

If ever I needed the peaceful countryside, this week would be it. After work, we met up at the Bee Ranch and our new acquaintance Bill took us out to see some potential bee yard areas. Bill and his father were beekeepers years ago and while Bill only keeps a couple of hives now for fun, he says that scouting bee yard areas is in his blood and he can’t help it. He sees countryside and he wonders, “Would THIS be good bee area?” And you know what? Mark does the same thing. 🙂 I enjoyed sitting in the back, listening to them talk and occasionally I’d make comments. But mostly I aimed my phone camera out the to show you what I saw. The above shot doesn’t even begin to capture the yellow splashes of color on the hills. And yes, there were hills. Who knew there were so many nearby in the Fentress area?? It’s a sign we saw as we drove from Seguin, through Geronimo and on to San Marcos on the way to Austin. We always say, “Oh, let’s go to Fentress sometime.” But we didn’t until today and we realized all we had been missing. It is LOVELY out there. It made my heart sing and then it made me almost giddy to see the beauty. If Bill had not been with us, I might have really let out more happy sounds but I kept it in check.

One of the primary purposes was to hunt down the Clover that Bill recalls having bees on in the past. We several areas that had great big patches of it and then we came upon the main field snapped below. It’s about twenty-five acres and it was full of Yellow Clover! There were some bees on it but not too many and certainly enough to share should we find someone with property out there who might want some bees on their property. If you know of anyone, let us know! If I was young and more foolish, I would have run through the field. But I’m older now and I think about all sorts of insect bites. So I take pictures. haha

In other beekeeping news, we got twenty new queens in from Derwin Thrash out of Mississippi. Guess what – they came in the regular mail, late in the day and stuff into our mailbox! We can only think they did because the envelope had not been marked in any way to indicate bees were inside and our postal friends are typically very kind to us and the bees and call early in the morning for us to go get the girls. Oh well. Mark was pleased that all queens survived and he quickly got them into a queen bank.

In case you are wondering how you would know there’s something alive inside the envelope…here is a video of the buzzing queens. I only hesitated to open it because I wasn’t positive there weren’t bees floating around inside the envelope but outside the queen cages. 🙂 Gotta be safe you know.

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