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!
Gretchen Bee Ranch 