What a couple of gorgeous days we've had up here in soggy 'ol western Washington! The rains let up and we marched ourselves and hundreds of lbs of frame honey out through muddy fields and farm pastures to get our ladies fed! We hold back tons of honey during extraction to feed back, if needed, to strong springtime clusters. I'm hesitant to say the word Springtime just yet, as we likely will have a million gallons of steadily-pouring rain yet to deal with, but after the recent cold snaps, I knew whatever bees were still alive would likely need a little treat to boost morale in the hive. It was also a nice day to cart out any unused equipment that...
Honey has been coming in from all the apiaries, so much so that I haven't been able to spend as much time on the website as I'd like. Someday soon I'll have really uniform product images and an updated inventory. But between driving north and south, traffic, markets, extracting, bottling, hand writing labels, and many AWESOME house guests, I just haven't gotten to it! We have extracted and sold most of the early springtime wildflower honey from our Seattle urban hives, and now just in the last two days have extracted 300 more lbs of farm fresh Blueberry blossom honey! I'm right handed and use that arm for most of the extracting (hand-crank, folks!) and as of today I'm a...
We just got word this afternoon that the 2013 new package bees are arriving this FRIDAY!! In years past, the packages typically arrive much later than scheduled, like two weeks later. This year they are actually 4 days early! We will be beefing up our stock at the Growing Washington/Alm Hill Gardens certified organic, diversified berry, flower, and vegetable farm in Nooksack, Washington, as well as our stock down south in Sumner, Wa on friends Amy and John Hanawalt's Fairyland Farm. Two of our packages will find their way to the new Growing Veterans farm in Lynden, Wa, established this year to help post-911 vets. We bought an extra suit, gloves, and hive tool so we can teach the guys...