One of the scariest challenges in agreeing to grow my little, seasonal, farm based business into a year-round specialty food shop at pike place, was and will be, supply of honey. There is only so much proprietary honey we can produce off less than 100 hives, and that amount has historically been divied out to weekly farmers market visits and for sale through our friends at Growing washington. With the opening of a new shop, we have a chance to sell other beekeeper's honey as well as ours, which is great because we are almost completely out of our own honey for the season. over the years I've met quite a few gifted beekeepers in Washington state that haven't...
Here I am, sneaking in a beekeeper selfie so I can say I actually met Sue Cobey and hung out with master beekeepers Bruce and Marco. It's all about street cred, you know?! so how did I get here? Good question. I've been working with and buying up a bit of Bruce's amazing honey for my small but growing wholesale side business, which will hopefully sustain me and my bees over the winter when funds and honey reserves are low. Bruce has a team of great guys working with him, each with their own set of strengths and abilities. I see Seth and Joe and Pat regularly, but haven't spent much time with the man himself. So I just...
What do you get when you mix one totally exhausted and overwhelmed beekeeper/owner operator, a honey house garage door left wide open for 14 hours on a sunny Sunday, and many many neighbors in a small conservative town? Well, you get the 2014 Everson Beepocalype! On Labor Day weekend this year, I packed up my truck with two markets worth of tents, tables, honey, and high hopes for a great day, as well as my suitcase to go home to Michigan for a week to attend my cousin Abagail's wedding and relax with family on a red eye flight out of seattle after the long day of driving, managing, and selling. I got my first indication that I'd messed...
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...
these are the three sizes and varieties of italian honeybees that make up a hive. There is, and can only be, one queen. There are thousands and thousands of her daughter worker bees, and all year long the queen will lay eggs for more workers. Then there are the drones. The drones are the male honeybee who get to live in the hive for about 7 months out of the year, here in western washington. They are good for one thing, and that is to mate with a virgin queen as she first emerges. The drones can't help defend the hive because they have no stinger, they can't help feed the hive because they don't forage. They just laze around,...