Hello 2015

Where has our 2014 gone? I love the holidays because it often brings out the best in most people. The holiday season also is one of our busiest retail times with holiday shows and our annual Holiday Open House – this was our 5th year! – on top of the usual weekly store hours at the Bee Ranch and the Saturday Farmers Market at the Pearl AND the kickoff of the first annual Gift Market that Pearl hosted. So, my apologies for not being able to keep up with the blog as I would have loved. You have no idea how many times I have opened this up to add tidbits. I am determined to post today! The problem is we’ve had so much to share that it’s totally overwhelming so I’m going to simplify a bit for now.

First off – HAPPY NEW YEAR!! How has your first day of the new year been? Are you going to fill 2015 up with adventures and laughter and fun along with all the hard work I’m sure we all have ahead of us in life? We plan to enjoy every moment and every beeventure, that’s for sure.

Next, how are our bees doing? Great! It’s the first of January and we’ve been going through a rather wet winter spell though it’s been pretty mild most all of December. Great news for the bees – there’s been a good amount of pollen and nectar gathered for their stores and we’ve actually been amazed at the amount of brood on many of the hives when we opened them up for an occasional check on things. I like it when Mark is excited and happy with the hives’ health. He says it’s looking very good for a great season coming up and we hope this pattern will remain until spring!

We are looking forward to another year of grueling though very rewarding work and the best part of all of this is that we get to work with each other, family members and some of the very best friends anyone could ask for in this world. We are often amazed at how tireless they work to help us when they have plenty going on in their own lives as well. We sure appreciate each and every person in our life. We love you and we learn from you.

This is the lovely Thuy who stopped by in December for too short a visit. But while she was here, she sure did help us with ornament making and candle pouring. Oh yes, and bookkeeping. Fun! Always fun to have her help.

And then there’s our adorable, hard-working grandson – if you are doing something, he wants to help. That young man sure has learned a great work ethic early in life! He seems to get great satisfaction out of whatever it is he is doing. We sure love him!

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Ringing in the New Year at the Bee Ranch

Hi everyone! After a lovely week in Florida with my side of the family, we are back home just in time to wrap up 2011 and to ring in the new year ahead of us. Today was a lovely day to come back to – perfect warmth with a slight nip in the air. Lots of sun, which means the bees in the back yard were flying pretty well when we checked on them. Mark said they were even bringing in some pollen. That’s always nice to see. We missed them during our short week away. 🙂

We had a few calls, a few emails and a few online orders this week. Can’t beat that. Running our business is hard but it’s also nice when you can take a bit of a break and still manage to do some business on the road. Technology is great for that. Back to the Bee Ranch today – those emails we received were from people wanting to stop by for honey and/or candles so we opened up the honey house as soon as we got home so that we can air it out a bit. Cranked up the wax melter and by tomorrow we should be pouring some more beeswax products. Got an order for 80 1-oz bars while we were gone so we are excited to get that filled. Some friends also stopped by to visit and pick up some honey. It’s always great to see our friends, especially from a distance away. We love to show them what we’re doing and how things work in the honey house. And we’re always happy when they have great questions and want to know more about beekeeping. Neither Mark nor I ever seem to tire of talking with people about these things.

Of course, Smokey welcomed us back and seemed right at home with our visitors, as usual. It’s nice when things are as they always are sometimes. As we look forward to the new year ahead, we were thinking back to all the wonderful adventures and beginnings we’ve had with our business in 2011. We sure couldn’t have done it without all the support of you, our friends and family. Our little business really took some big steps this year – getting products into new retail outlets, growing the number of hives we have, increasing awareness about bees through educational presentations and talks and our beekeeping class, increasing the number of events we attend, getting better organized in the honey house, getting the website up and running, getting more media coverage in print, online and on tv, getting our finances in order with formal assistance so we can better assess cost versus revenue…and more! And here’s to even more of “and more” in 2012. 🙂

Here are some of the things we resolve for 2012:

• Be better caretakers of the bees and share that knowledge with others
• Increase the quantity and quality of our hives
• Find new opportunities for the bees to pollinate and produce food for people
• Mark said he resolves to live in more harmony with Smokey (I cleaned that up to keep this positive! 🙂 )
• I resolve to blog on all my blogs more regularly!

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