My home state of Michigan has seen for the majority of my life, a downturn in it's economy due to the decline of the auto industry. When detroit gets a cold, the entire state gets the flu! I left my home state after college because there just weren't the opportunities for young people that other areas offered, which is how I found myself in the Pacific Northwest. Once here, I unexpectedly found myself working in the farming and agricultural sector and that gave me pause to think about farming and foods from Michigan. Michigan sits smack dab in the center of very prime maple syrup producing region. The more I looked into it, it seemed maple syrup is indeed and "untapped resource" (pun intended!), with only 3% of its trees being tapped as of a few years ago. With enough trees tapped, Michigan could be poised to out-produce vermont! It has to do with freezing nights and thawing days, and it's what makes springtime in northern michigan so awesome!Additionally, my dad and his wife Andy have been trying to find a way to help me and my business, and a way to stay busy as they begin to retire. For awhile we talked about having them become our taper candle makers, or maybe our Beeodorant makers, or maybe some other value added product but it was just too hard and too expensive to consider shipping raw goods to them and then shipping finished product back to me. Then it dawned on me that I don't have to wait till I'm retired to move back home and make maple syrup, I'll just have my retired dad and Andy start making it right now!!!
So I made an investment in supplies to tap trees and dad got to work! The sap was flowing this spring, buckets and buckets full from the end of february until the end of march! Dad and andy had all the grandkids helping them, and from our family property there was enough sap to begin our first year of syrup production!40 parts tree sap make 1 part syrup, and these two were busy. Our family lives very close to one of the largest and only certified organic maple syrup production facilities in the state, and we were able to have them co-produce and co-pack our syrup for us. Unlike our raw honey, every jar of our maple syrup is hand filled at 180 degrees for sterilization. You need to wear gloves after awhile cuz that is hot!!!A bit of backstory: Dad and Andy developed a well known and very well loved series of children books about a fictional character named Buck Wilder and his adventures in the outdoors. Buck Wilder makes fishing, camping, boating, and animals fun for all ages while sending a positive message to not be afraid of trying something new! It was decided that Buck likely eats maple syrup everyday with rascal raccoon and all his other forest friends, so this is Buck's syrup!!Besides hand bottling each and every jar, Tim and Andy have painstakingly handwritten each and every label, numbering the lots and jars and initialing each one. The result is the most charming and hand made and heartfelt product I have ever seen. I am so proud of my dad and Andy, and I am so proud to have this amazing food in my store and online. I have no doubt you will love it too!!
]]>He is also my younger brother and he has faced cancer head on this year and is currently in remission. He leaves the confines of our small town in michigan tomorrow where our parents and other siblings and everyone in the fam has helped him and his amazing girlfriend Taylor overcome this insanely dark period in their very young lives. I am so proud of you little brother for kicking cancers ass!!!! Now go take the world back, it's waiting for you xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
]]>One of the things that really sets Sunny Honey Company apart from other honey brands is our commitment to producing and sourcing from close personal beekeeper peers and carefully vetted honey operations. We will not ever, and I mean never, go to a large distributor or commercial packing house to source honey if we run out. We will just stop doing business. Period. No exceptions!
One of the best things about our little business of bees and honey being busier than expected is that we get to grow and become a larger employer and supplier and producer than ever before. One of the bad things about our little business of bees and honey is that we are always facing shortages of certain honey varieties that people have come to love and trust. Many of the honey varieties that we produce and source from small producers have an absolute finite amount and when it's gone, it's gone until the next year.
After the christmas holiday season, we found ourselves on the brink of running out of at least 3-4 favorite small crop honeys and we decided that instead of sell it all over the winter and face the possibility of having only 1-2 varieties of honey over the spring and early summer until 2017 crops are ready (honey harvest season in the pacific northwest is primarily in the late summer / early fall with the exception of some spring flows), that we would pull back and be reserved and play it safe. So we shut down the website sales and probably made a bunch of people upset. We also stopped accepting special orders and additional wholesale.
This, of course, is the exact opposite of what most businesses (especially in amazon's seattle!) would do but we are not most businesses. We do not have everything in all sizes, all the time, for everyone, everywhere.
In all honestly, when we decided to agree to take over the location inside Pike Place Market where we currently reside, it was our choice to add an addendum to our lease agreement with the historic commission that stated if we had a crop failure and couldn't find honey from an actual local beekeeper to sell that we would be able to close the store and break our lease! For the traditional business model of supply and demand that would be insane to do, but we don't have a traditional model of business. As a business We enjoy growing larger and supplying more but we have boundaries because we are farmers and we produce and sell seasonal food.
So thank you for being patient while we weathered the winter months. Spring has sprung all around us and our bees are fat and happy and ready to produce! Fingers crossed that this year will be the best yet!!!!!
]]>Because of a confluence of recent events, we are backpedaling on our earlier claim of opening a second retail location in bellingham, wa.
Well, sort of...
In our haste to find a new production facility, we found this one on ohio street and really thought we'd make a go of opening an additional little honey shop. We rented a rototiller and replanted the entire front garden bed with bee friendly flowers, we had custom signs made for the marquee we painted the interior and exterior of the building and set up a rudimentary honey shop that has garnered quite a bit of attention. The momentum was there and then a couple very important variables emerged that gave us pause in our ambitions.
firstly, our store in Pike place market has been keeping us more than busy on it's own, and to grow bigger before we have seamless systems in place could potentially lead to disastrous levels of burnout and frustration. in fact, we are limiting many other ambitions, including farmers markets that we used to attend (sorry guys!) and not accepting any more wholesale accounts until we are steady on our ever growing feet.
Secondly, we have noticed right off the bat that this new industrial fringe downtown location has almost no walking traffic, and those that are passing by are usually just wandering around, either from the brewery or towards the food bank. Multiple times in the last few weeks we have had the doors closed and been working when men have decided to come in, unannounced and uninvited, and either tell us what to do or start asking questions and looking around. WTF???!!! Seriously, we are dealing with live bees coming and going all the time on honey supers, the door says private property and is the back delivery door anyway. Additionally, we are staffed predominantly with women, often times working alone and having the threat of strange men just walking in the door anytime is terrifying. Soooo, we tried locking the doors. Men (well one, who was wearing a blanket on a 90 degree day) have decided then to pound on the door and shout until we pay attention to them. Good grief! The entitlement is astounding! So we posted signs, indicating a potential for harm by live bees, private property, and to literally go away. These signs hang on the back roll door and delivery door and are meant to offer us some privacy while working. We have a bare bones skeleton crew of people responsible for quite a bit of work, and we simply don't have time to answer questions or explain what we are up to. But it's great that the interest exists, and reminds me personally of how much more I need to share here on the website.
Are you still here? Still reading? good, cuz now its time for the good news! We have partnered with our old friends growing washington and their wildly successful and totally amazing local choice food box csa program this year, and not only are we offering 7 different honey sizes to it's current members, we are opening our showroom every thursday from 11-6 as a drop spot for members to pick up their farm fresh foods! which means we will be open to the public and will have all kinds of honey and honey products for sale!!! It's true! and it starts tomorrow!!!!! 11am-6pm each thursday and we are really excited to see what happens.
]]>I'm coming to understand, though, that most people besides a very specific peer group of new and small independent business owners like myself, have no interest or empathy for someone who wants to complain about being too busy. January had a week of calm before we had a structural issue in the Pike shop which caused us to close for a day and do a small remodeling of our back and side wall display (thus making the shop bigger, thus increasing the area where people can peruse, thus me having to make more stuff to fill the shelves, thus those shelves continue to rapidly deplete, thus the no chilling out). even though it was in the end a really positive change, That remodel kickstarted a winter of growth, rather than a winter of stability.
Previous to january was the big 6 week holiday push, preceded by our big anniversary party, putting us back in October when it was apparent that we needed a bigger and more consolidated workshop and that we needed a new sign. We had been working out of and storing supplies and honey in 2 separate warehouses in Nooksack was well as a storage unit in Everson, an Activspace work area in ballard, and my apartment in fremont, as well as over crowded storage and work area in the back of the pike shop. I knew we had a move coming and a sign to commission but couldn't think about any of it until after the holidays.
So I started looking for warehouses everyday, obsessively scouring craigslist and loop net and commercial real estate websites everyday to find a space with concrete floors, utility sink, hot water, roll doors, and space to make a mess. I never thought it would've been so challenging to find a place that is affordable and clean and conveniently located, but i blame the newly legalized weed industry for scooping up all the available warehouse space up and down the i-5 corridor. What I was left with were choices in places that I don't know anyone, or that will continue to require me to drive all the time. Between tacoma, kent, auburn, everett, seder woolley, and bellingham...I chose to put us back in whatcom county because at least that's where olga lives, and it's in much closer proximity to the 3 main beekeepers that we work with in whatcom and skagit. Meanwhile our darling shopkeeper and illustrator extraordinaire Devon got busy putting together an idea we came up with for a new sign! It came out adorable, better than I hoped for, and now just needs historic approval and hanging (which will take 6 more weeks, ugh!)
So by february I knew if we didn't find a place asap, we would run out of honey(all of our 2015 honey was sitting in a warehouse and had to be moved before warming and bottling). I finally found a huge and expensive and very visible (rather than inexpensive and rural) warehouse/office/retail location in bellingham, and besides it being a refreshingly easy space to work in, it came with the most laid back and friendly landlord. Even my mom agreed (oh did I mention my mom visited for 10 days in the end of february) that the landlord is awesome and the space is way cool.
So then all i had to do was move out of the activspace wax disaster zone, rent a huge box truck and move out of all three everson/nooksack spaces (hallelujah! Finally!), move all the equipment and supplies from my apartment and the activspace unit to bellingham, get the new place painted and cleaned, oversee the transport and delivery of all our 2015 honey back stock and beeswax, train two new staff members (oh did I mention our store manager mary has moved on this month as well?), oh and keep the wholesale orders and shelves of our store stocked in what has unexpectedly been our busiest month since opening the shop!
The good news is that it's done. It should be noted that beekeeper olga helped substantially with the whatcom county move, and without her I might've buckled. Also, my new best friends are the guys at Peninsula trucking, just one block away from our new warehouse. They have been patient with missed jar deliveries, pallets of barrels needing opening, and understanding the pressures of a rapidly growing small business.
So I look forward to another time to chill out. I have no idea when that will be, and that's just fine...
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep
But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep -Robert Frost
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I think, though, that I tend to be really hard on myself, always driving to do everything to its fullest and to the far reaches of my best try...and I haven't been feeling like a very good beekeeper this fall. I have been feeling neglectful and preoccupied with traveling and parties and bottling honey and well, a little more me time than I've been allowed in the past year.
So last week the weather had it's first sustained cold snap. Cool, clear days and frosty freeze nights for a week. It was beautiful and good for business (humans, like bees, come out of their hives when it's sunny!), but it gave me quite a pause to consider whether or not my bees would be ok. Then the rains started, and have delivered a deluge of, well, typical december proportions. You see, if you don't feed your bees a little extra sugar syrup and pollen in the fall, the colony won't be stimulated to continue raising brood. If the colony isn't very big going into fall, it won't survive winter. When you open the lid of a beehive in the cold months, all the bees cluster together around a few frames up top of the hive. Ideally you'd like to see a basketball sized cluster, indicating a healthy queen and a well organized unit. A softball sized cluster has far less chance of making it through the long, cold months because they simply cannot produce enough heat to stay warm. SO by not feeding through the entire fall, I feared I had made a mortal mistake with many of my hives. Mind you, they all had plenty of honey reserves going into winter...I had made sure of that back in august.
Another reason I just haven't been the best caretaker this year is that I split my time between two places, 110 miles apart. It's hard to just pop in and see beehives when they are 4 miles from the Canadian border and I live in Ballard. I keep dreaming of a rural location where I can have my bees, bottling, waxery, office, and kitchen all in one! Also the store has been tremendously busy and I'm still head of production. This means I'm up in Nooksack bottling honey once a week, but not checking hives.
Anyway, I went up this week and forced myself to stay for 3 days straight. On the first two, the weather was dark and wet and super depressing, so Olga and I committed to bottling as much honey as we could. We emptied two barrels of honey and got the store stocked for (hopefully) the remainder of the holiday season. On the last day, I woke up early and the sun was already up!
olga met me in the field and we proceeded to go through the apiary with bated breath. One after the other, we discovered the hives to be very much alive, very full of bees and honey, and very active for such a cool day! I had never been so happy to see defensive behavior from guard bees! All through this season, I have collected any honey that has either sat out without a lid, or from broken jars at the market, or maybe just was too unfiltered and messy. This honey is what we feed back to the bees in their feeder frames this time of year, because it's safer than feeding liquid sugar (which could ferment and make the bees sick because they don't process it fast enough due to it being so cold out). We also add dry sugar to the hive just above the cluster. By adding a sheet of newspaper on top of the main hive body, then covering it with an empty super and filling that super with dry sugar, this acts as insulation for the hive. The sugar draws moisture out of the hive and hardens up into a big candy block over the next month or so. The bees can chew through the newspaper and have a little snack if they like as well. I know, sugar is weird and I should stay away from it. But it helps the bees this time of year and I liken it to giving your kids McDonalds. If your kids were going to starve to death over the winter, wouldn't you give them mcdonalds? Yes, you would!
I decided to start using old dead-outs as weights after the hives were filled with sugar. I don't want to worry about the lids flying off during the notorious frasier valley wind gusts in whatcom county. The bees won't have access to the tops of their hives until they chew through the sugar, and they usually have to reseal the lids with propolis after i get in there and mess around. Olga, being the hardworking, intuitive, and fearless helper that she is, went and found river rocks to weigh down the hives she had been working on. Her idea was not only cuter than mine, but much more efficient. So you can see my handy work and hers if you happen to be walking down the dike road along the nooksack river!
I'd like to take a quick moment and just say a little something about finding good help. I was, for more than a decade, the highest selling salesperson in my old job. I said yes to everything, worked tirelessly for little pay and even less thanks, and took pride in a hard days work. I have found as now a wage provider, or for lack of a better term, the boss, to be notsomuch shocked as I am disappointed that not everyone works to the same level of dedication that I did, or do. My dad taught me, and still reminds me, to always do more than what's expected. Do more than what you're told to do and good things will come. A perfect example of this kind of work ethic is my friend Olga.
I met Olga when she and I both worked for the greenhouse tulip season on Alm Hill Gardens. I sold at the markets and she worked the fields. She stands about 5 ft tall and must weigh in around 85 lbs, but can carry her own weight across a muddy field day in and day out without complaint. If faced with an unknown task, Olga dives in, prepared to prove that she is capable. She is quiet and reserved, not letting many see behind her serious and focused exterior. I saw in her a work ethic beyond any other young white people on the farm, and when she one day admitted to having a fascination with bees and honey, I knew I had to poach her from the farm and make her my helper! I haven't been able to provide full time work, just here and there bottling and basic beehive maintenance for her to kind of learn the ropes. I can give her very little instruction and she picks it up and runs it without question. I am not a natural teacher, and i actually hate having to explain the process and history of things so much so that I end up just opting to do it myself. With Olga, there is never a feeling that I should do it for her. She is capable and kind, and so so organized. For example, when I take the empty frames out of supers so that we can use them for sugaring the bees, I toss the frames willy-nilly in a pile to deal with later on. When olga empties a super of its frames, she lays them out in perfectly stacked piles. I already told you about her river rock weights, which she quietly and without instruction just chose to innovate. She is a gem and I am motivated to keep her on the team as long as I can!As the sun set on yesterday, I felt happy and relieved and excited for the future. I will have that rural workshop of my dreams someday, and you'd better believe I will have Olga there, working harder and smarter than me.
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we had no idea until Annie cooper sent us a text about it at like 11am sunday. Great little write up and we are thrilled to be included with so many other amazing local foods. So I guess this means back to the bottling room to fill more holiday jars!!
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The first batch was an immediate hit, landing on our Pike Place shop shelves within the week of it's production. Samples given to friends yielded the same response across the board! WTF?! What did you put in this? Magically effective!!! We asked around for what the cutest name should be, either Bee-O Stinger or Bee-Odorant or something else. Bee-Odorant seemed to do the trick, cute and curious and simple. I was so pleased to have made something that was so easy (well, mixing the ingredients is easy but getting it in the tubes is another horribly messy story) and effective.
For our 2nd batch, I upped the quantity by 10 times, and used generic brands of baking soda and corn starch from the restaurant supply store. Within a week, one of our employees mentioned to me that she had a red rash on her underarms and that something in the mix was making her allergic. I had no problem, but was still using the sample from the 1st batch, so ignored her and chalked it up to anything other than my fabulous new product!
Then I started on my 2nd tube, from the 2nd batch and too started having a reddish reaction with sensitivity in my pits. HUH? What could it be? Was it the generic baking soda and corn starch? Wait, could it be genetically modified corn in the starch that was somehow toxic? How could this totally natural, hell even edible mixture be giving anyone a weird reaction?
So I went to the co-op and found organic corn starch! Who knew they even made this. I bought all the small boxes of organic corn starch that I could find and bought all the Bob's Red Mill baking soda that I could find. I was already using unrefined organic coconut oil and beeswax from cappings wax (fresh delicate wax newly made this season by our bees and shaved off during the extraction process), so I figured now I had my bases covered. On my way out of the store I bumped into Kim, an old market acquaintance who now own the very successful and totally amazing moon valley organics out of deming. Kim and I both got our start at the market working for the same honey lady years ago, and now we both own small, handcrafted honey and beeswax based businesses at Pike!
anyway we were gabbing away and i mentioned the rash from my new bee-odorant and she quickly pointed out that it was likely baking soda that's the culprit. Why though, would something so natural be so intense? She replied "sometimes things can be too natural", and we soon parted ways.
I continued to think about what she said for days, but tried out the same recipe with all my new fancy organic ingredients. Wouldn't you know, within a week of wearing this new batch, I got redness and sensitivity back in my armpits. damn, I guess it's true that the anti-bacterial properties found in baking soda are just to strong for that concentration. Maybe it's just too acid and needs basing by some other agent? hmmmmm, back to the drawing board i go.
So now I have a new recipe to try out, but will hold off for a few weeks of personal guinea-pigging before I release it to the shop. I'll keep the same amount of coconut oil and essential oils, but I'll use half as much baking soda and double the corn starch. I'm also thinking of adding in some unrefined shea butter and maybe a little vitamin e to counteract the intensity of the baking soda. I might also add more beeswax because the last batch was pretty soft.
I think this warrants further testing, because like all the other things I've made or overseen for the shop, bee-odorant is a product i really want to use. It's the start of a whole line of beeswax based body products and skin care, and maybe even makeup that I've always wanted. beeswax based mascara with natural charcoal? Yep, that's in the works! Solid perfumes? you know it! Eye creams, lip stick, oh yeah!!!
But let's get this bee-odorant back on track first. Oh, and feel free to let me know if lavender or grapefruit or any other essential oil sounds like something you'd wear! Feedback is sooooooooo welcome!!!
We are back with the beeodorant remix, version 2.0!!!!!
OK so i cut the baking soda down to less than 25% of the dry ingredients, and added in skin-soothing cocoa butter and vitamin e. The cocoa butter is nearly as hard as beeswax, so additionally helps with the firmness of the paste.
As of today, 10/15/15, the human trials (that means me) have shown this miraculous beeodorant is effective for daily use, no sting when you use immediately after shaving, no skin irritation after 1 week, and no stink even after long stressful market days, long workouts at the gym, locking your keys in the car, having to jog home to find you left your spare key at the shop in Pike Place, and 2 Uber rides in stand still traffic!!!!! True story!!!
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We started the lengthy process of extracting our proprietary honey last week, both from the city and from the farm. Some of the hives that we just began from nucs this past april are already producing a ton of honey! Alm hill top farm and our nooksack river apiaries were the two strongest locations out in the country, producing honey from blueberry blossoms, big leaf maple trees, dandelion, and a little field clover. of course our superstar georgetown hives in seattle continue to pump out way-above-average springtime honey crops. this year the georgetown urban bees made darker, amber hued honey, from blackberry blossom, black locust, big leaf maple, holly, laurel, and many other ditch wildflowers and landscaping plants! olga assisted in extracting and was a natural at cutting comb and fitting the frames in to the tiny grooves inside the extractor. She is the greatest helper because despite her small frame, she is strong, smart, capable, and quiet! Sometimes we would find frames that had multiple color honey in them and it was so fun to taste each one before we mixed it all together! Even little cole came out and lent a hand cutting a couple frames before the stray bees flying around freaked him out too bad;)All in all, we've extracted about 1000 lbs of honey so far this year. To anyone besides a commercial beekeeper, that would seem like an insane amount of honey. To us it's more than half as much as we are used to producing in a year, so we are hoping for a miracle with blackberry blossom and japanese knotweed still yet to come. Many beekeepers are saying their summer crops will be significantly down this year, not for spring honey which saw no derth in nectar, but for traditional summer varieties like blackberry blossom and mountain fireweed. Wildflowers need rain to produce heavy nectar flows, and we are in a drought year that has been blazing hot almost everyday since may.
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We have placed order in for 20 new nucleus hives this year, and have over 2 dozen hives looking strong after a mild winter. We hope to split those strong hives and get up to 75 beehives for summer honey production!
For now, the weather has been warm enough for the bees to be awake and eat their honey reserves, but not warm enough or long enough to put liquid feed in the hives. Because of the rain and cold nights, it's still best to supplement dry sugar for the bees. This gives them a light snack and helps also to pull moisture from the hives.
I was really pleased to see so many hives filled with fresh brood, drones, and really large clusters. I never send my bees to California almond pollination and because of that I always get jealous when I hear about other local beeks having big, heavy, robust hives in early spring. Maybe this year will be different.
As of now, all the hives from the blueberry field are dead, all the hives at gillies rd are dead, but all the hives at Kronge's are thriving as are the river hives. Growing veterans has 1 of 2 still alive, and of course my dear old georgetown hives keep trucking along. I haven't visited sumner since last spring and i don't plan to. If they are alive, god speed and good luck. If not, consider that experiment over!
]]>over the years I've met quite a few gifted beekeepers in Washington state that haven't or won't sell directly to the public. There are so many overworked beekeepers that hold onto hundreds of pounds of raw honey because they focus mainly on the business of pollination. Pollination contracts bring in more money for a beekeeper than honey sales do, also the honey becomes a secondary by-product, and is typically sold off in massive bulk.
Massive. Like 600 lb barrels. I've never bought a barrel of honey before because how the hell would I deal with it? How would I move it, where would it store, how is it tipped over and drained? The infrastructure involved with barrel management is a huge investment. But the day I agreed to move into the new shop space, I new I had to build out the backend of my little business asap.
the other tremendously stressful thing I've learned is that you'd better grab the barrels of honey while they are in season, because they sell off faster than you could imagine. No one will hold something for you when there are 2-3 big businesses vying for the lot. You can't wait and decide later if you want blueberry blossom or fireweed honey because it won't be there. This year I didn't get approved for a loan through my bank, so I had to wait for an investor to swoop in and grab as much local honey as we could.
We bought three varieties of honey from different local producers, but distributed by a huge beekeeping business in skagit county. The coriander blossom was made on whidbey island, the wildflower is from Dryden, and the sweet clover/alfalfa is from ellensburg.
clayton is my old friend and former boss at growing washington. He has stepped in to invest in Sunny honey when I needed it most, thus insuring that we have enough product to last the winter, and a backend production center and farm to grow our business. So back in December, he and I visited skagit county and bought 8 barrels of honey.
We moved them on pallets to a warehouse in Nooksack, where I've been hand scooping the honey out, each week. I use a jam ladle and slowly scoop the honey into buckets, and then bottle from there. It's like colonial living and it takes forever. But sometimes hard work and sacrifice pay off over time and all of a sudden you have enough cash flow to radically modernize and make efficient your systems!! this week saw the arrival of the patented PowerBlanket that wraps around one barrel at a time and slowly heats it to 90 degrees, and our new Mann Lake EZ Fill bottling system (pics to come, I haven't been up to see it yet!)
Life is about the change for me, after years and years of hand filling each jar. I will have time now to focus on so much that has been ignored, and to grow our small but promising wholesale business. Sunny Honey has seen some radical growth in the last few months, and Couldn't be happier!!!!!
]]>ok, I'll slow down and do a more abridged version of how we got here:
back in September I was casually delivering a special order of honey straws to Scott Davies of the Pike Place Market PDA (Preservation and Development Authority) down in the main office. I was allowed to walk back to Scott's desk in the commercial area, and was telling him my rather animated version of the Beepocalype that had just occurred, when I literally got tapped on the shoulder by a commercial tenant manager who politely asked me if I had a moment of time to speak with him. He said there was going to be an opening upstairs for a specialty food store and that I was who they had in mind for the spot (actually, I found out later that they said the same thing to at least one other business, but ultimately the other passed on the spot and it went to me!) I couldn't believe I had been considered, vetted, and hand selected for the spot. What was I going to say, no? There's no way I could say no, even though I wasn't ready for that kind of growth or radical switch from seasonal farmer to year-round specialty honey shop. Hell, just two days beforehand I was in TC at my cousin's wedding and had such a great time with family and friends that I was ready to pack it all in and finally move home. Then this? I didn't see it coming but I knew it was an opportunity that wouldn't come again, and if I actually ever wanted to make a real living off farming and handcrafted products, this was the time and place to dive in with abandon.
So I had a meeting with commercial, which led to me filling out an application for the spot along with business plan and 3 year income projections (aka the land of make-believe), and soon the ball was rolling. I was initially hesitant about signing on to a long term lease because I had no real idea what the space would be like, or whether or not customers would find Sunny Honey to be as charming once we were off the daystalls and possibly less "farmy" than previously perceived. Commercial was understanding of my hesitancies, and offered me a risk free trial (month-to-month) lease just to get me in the door for the holiday season. I agreed and things kept moving forward!
One of the stipulations of joining the Pike Place Market is that you adhere to their strict guidelines for design and use of space set forth and regulated by the 15 person Historic commission. All new business, renovation, additions or changes to the market are approved through a meeting and voting process, and Sunny Honey was no exception.
I anticipated the Historic Committee meeting to be far more nerve wracking and invasive than it actually was. I was beyond freaked out as I drove down to Seattle for my first of two meetings (the 2nd, and more important one was actually easier). The Market staff and committee have my best interests at heart, and wouldn't want to see a business that has no, well, business being there. Sunny Honey Company is the perfect fit for the tiny shop located in the main arcade, previously occupied by Mt Townsend Creamery and before that for many years, Best Flowers. Sunny Honey Company is a locally produced, farm based specialty food business and by all historic measure, that is considered priority use for the main arcade area. Even with overwhelmingly good odds of being approved, I still had to sit in the middle of a room and describe to a panel of judges why they should consider me and my business for the market. It was a challenging process and ultimately I was "Strongly Approved" by a unanimous vote on both my usage and design applications! I walked downstairs all by myself, beaming with pride and excitement, standing just outside the entrance to what would be my new shop and grabbed the first familiar face I saw just to share my news. It was James the market master and he laughed at me because clearly I was so excited to share the news with someone and he just happened to be walking by!
I had always thought that a permanent honey stand would do well, no, would do exceedingly well at Pike. It's like everyone, every age, from everywhere in the world like honey (besides the 5 of you that I've met in the last decade that mysteriously don'T). everyone likes honey, it's a local food, it doesn't go bad, and tourists like it. So really, I thought it was a no brainer to put up walls and make a go of it. There were, surprisingly, a number of naysayers and pessimists who either didn't think the spot would work, or who didn't think honey could stand on it's own as a formidable retail force. Many suggested that I had to branch out immediately into honey related foods and drinks, or have a gimmicky thing right off the bat. Honestly, I wondered the same.
So there I was, with tentative design plans and strong approval to go forth, at 6:30 pm on wednesday night, when I got the email that the two artists that I had hoped would help me construct the shop couldn't make it the next day. My beaming smile of success about having made it through the hoops of the approval process was quickly eclipsed by a whole new set of stressors and worry. Who in the hell was going to help me now? Both my dad and my older brother are tremendously talented woodworkers and either could put the shop together in half a days time, except they both live 2000 miles away. I literally had no idea who to ask or what to do, and I had rapidly dwindling funds because I hadn't been to a market in almost 2 weeks by then. I needed that shop to open because I needed to make money to pay for it!
I started by googling construction in seattle, which wasn't what I needed, then carpenters and woodworkers and handyman services, and none were quite right. Then I called all my friends that own their own homes and asked if any of them had repairs done and could they recommend someone. Come to find out, the word I needed was "builder", and I got the name of a fine one indeed!
Ken Olofson (highly recommended) answered my call that desperate evening and agreed to come see the shop by 9am thursday. I didn't sleep well that night, and showed up at Pike early and frazzled by traffic, without any confidence. The shop was a sad and empty place:
The challenge here was to fill this up in a comfortable, well lit, and inviting way. My two artist contractors, who made the beekeeper cutout, gave me some rudimentary but brilliant ideas for where and how to build the displays, but I know nothing of technicalities and was relying heavily on both their creative and professional capacity until they canceled. Poor Ken had never met me before, and had no idea when he walked in the little shop, that I would be this overtired, stressed out, creatively needy, and technically ignorant woman who was openingly weeping within 15 minutes of meeting him. Yes, I couldn't help but cry a little that thursday morning when he started firing questions at me about the set up, what to do, and how to do it. I had to admit to him that I wasn't sure how to do what needed to be done, and that I was hoping he could have some ideas. I'm not sure that's what Ken expected, but he switched gears immediately and proved to be both creatively reliable and self directed over the next couple of days! So we assembled the store, hired honey helpers, and within 48 hrs we were live!!!!
Here's Ken the builder and some dudes from maintenance getting it done! Jenny and Randy, the original contractors, in the shop giving their ideas for the beehive lid wall partition. They had so many awesome visions for the shop, and I hope to work with them again! laying out lid choices for the partition
My surplus Supers and old hives had served as a makeshift privacy wall all summer in my Main Street EVERSON FRONT YARD. This look is a possible inspiration for coming designs!
This wooden antique shop sign from downtown Lynden inspired the base of Randy's beekeeper cutout. Also, serious bookkeeping with markers and phone calculator;)
Let's back up a minute and talk about Smith and Vallee woodworkers in my dream town of Edison. Here's Andrew Vallee helping me select kiln dried and wood planed maple slabs for the display shelves. These guys are so cool and multitalented. From fine furniture to rustic accents, these guys know what they are doing! I carefully selected all the elements for the shop, as I wanted everything to be part of a cycle and the system of beekeeping. Maple slabs were specifically used because that tree produces an important nectar and pollen source for the bees in spring time.
My museum like collection (read: hoarder) of beekeeping ephemera has sure come in handy for decorating. A first run at setting up shop.
Mary showed up to work in a mini skirt and heels for our opening day. Bless her. We seriously stone-souped this shop together in the first couple weeks, starting with half bare shelves but selling enough everyday to keep building bigger and better. It's 2 months in now and we finally feel collected and caught up! Here are the shelves getting full!
Our first customers, Ms Ferne Hages and her dad, Blain!!
More displays coming together
Bigger and better each day!
Improved lighting as well!
In the first month of business, my cousin visited, my grandma died, my truck crashed, and I moved myself and my business all by myself. If life was trying to test me, this year has been the bar exam.
museum style decorating out front instead of product because we think it's a space otherwise prone to shoplifting. Cutiepie Erin out sampling hard on our first weekend!!!
I'm so proud!
Almost Christmas and still smiling!
by now it's really working and I'm starting to relax! Lots of shaking hands and holding babies and talking to everyone who comes in. So many people are rooting for me and my little business. Enjoying visits from so many familiar faces!
Including my mom and brother for christmas week. It was so wonderful to have family show up and offer support over the holidays. This whole thing has been such a whirlwind of time, stress, money, emotions, celebration, excitement, renewed hope, trust, and love and i couldn't have done it without my family. also, for the first time in awhile I finally have enough money to buy an actual bed and sofa for them to sleep on. I feel totally grown up. Now it's like the ship is up and running, and I finally have time to sit still, sip some coffee on my new sofa, and tell this tale!!!
there is much more to be invested, renovated, innovated, and added to this little shop and business, but for now it's the easy winter doldrums and I couldn't be happier. Stay tuned for more!!!
]]>Heres the end product cooling off
now look at the last batch, with the biggest difference being color of beeswax and having used refined shea butter instead:
This last test batch has yielded 25 tubs. The scent is the same, a bright and claiming mixture of grapefruit, tea tree, and lavender essential oils, over the warm and soothing base notes of coconut and pure beeswax. This smooth, natural, and preservative free body balm is exactly what your dry and cold winter skin is crying out for! Stop by the shop for a sample and see for yourself!!!!
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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 asked him one day recently, if I could ride along with him sometime and ask him a million questions....or just sit with my mouth shut the entire time, whichever he prefers.
It was the next day when I unexpectedly got a call back from him, asking if I wanted to tag along to do some "spot checking" of the high mountain hives for a (hopefully) big fireweed honey crop. He said we'd be meeting at an undisclosed location, and when I asked "who's we?" he replied, oh just Sue and Marco and himself. I immediately knew he meant Sue Comologistwith UC Davis and WSU. Marco is a local beekeeper with a nose for knowing exactly what the gals are up to and an answer for every question (and a story) under the sun!
A beekeeper in his office:
We got started early and visited two different bee yards. Fireweed was seemingly done with its nectar flow for the season, and many hives were full of beautiful light honey!
Here's Bruce checking a hive
And Marco holding a gorgeous fresh frame of fireweed
We saw many other mountain wildflowers still in bloom, including Goldenrod (which reminds me of Michigan) and Pearly Everlasting, and maybe a few I couldn't name.
The whole day was so special for me, to kind of hang out with the varsity team and get to take notes and listen to their combined years of bee work and wisdom. Marco and Sue didn't really wear any protective gear and they both handle the bees with grace and ease. Bruce is just like hanging out with any old farmer, filled with ambition and experience I could only hope to gain someday. We had a picnic, and later Bruce took us up to this darling little secret mountain lake, just to look around. These are the best moments of being a beekeeper, when you get to roam the wilderness looking for nectar sources and scouting for future bee yards!
Big thanks to Bruce for letting me tag along and take pictures. Can't wait for the next time!
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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 up around 9pm that evening, when a friend who was helping me by dropping off my market supplies back in my garage(the "honey house") texted me saying I'd left the garage door open to the alleyway of my downtown everson house and it was "pretty buzzy" in there with bees. At the time, all I could think about was that I'd left honey drippings on the floor and stuff scattered about in disarray and I was was sorry anyone had to see it a mess.
The second indicator that I'd messed up came at about 11:30 pm on Sunday, with an urgent and terse email message from the homeowner (also a neighbor) that there was an emergency and I was to contact them immediately.
Oh shit. This likely means some wild neighborhood bees showed up for a feeding frenzy and my neighbors are pissed off.
Let me take a minute to explain to you what happens this time of year: most of the available nectar and pollen sources for western Washington honeybees has all but dried up and disappeared. Robbing of hives by honeybees, yellow jackets, hornets, and wasps of any undefended honey is common, and any honey or sugary treat will likely be devoured rather quickly. What I had done is what many beekeepers would say is a "worst case scenario". I had three full deep boxes of uncovered honey, likely weighing almost 200 lbs, as well as honey comb ready to be cut, a sticky extractor and decapping table, and sticky honey surfaces all around the room......and I left the damn door open for 14 hours on a hot sunny day. Every single wild honeybee, domesticated honeybee, and likely all the other hangers-on like yellow jackets showed up for what must have been the score of the century. All you can eat honey for everyone! And the word likely spread quickly, from bee to bee and from hive to hive. heres a quick view of some bees trying to get in on Monday morning around 9 am...way before the masses showed up!
Sooooo, you can imagine what my neighbors must have been thinking. Likely something along the lines of bug bombing the whole place, calling the fire department, wondering if this was the actual second coming, and other panicked hysteria. Even for a seasoned beekeeper, the sight of all hiderobbing bees would be intimidating.
Ill spare you the details of how my flight was postponed in Chicago airport for two days, with me fielding calls from my property manager, my neighbors, the homeowner, and my roommates over how to shut this event down and stop the bees from attacking my garage. Stressful doesn't even come close to being an adequate word to describe what was happening to me, sitting on the floor of an airport after being up for over 30 hrs and unable to do anything myself to make the problem go away.
finally at the last moment before I thought the landlord was gonna bomb the whole thing and ruin tens of thousands of dollars of honey processing equipment and packaging and honey, I came up with what I hoped would be a quick fix. My dear roommates had been fielding all the angry neighbors and landlord complaints as well as having to open the door every time someone came by to talk about it and now hey had to do the dirty work that I should've been there to do. I told them to "seal the whole garage up, quarantine like its Ebola"!!!!!!!! They got huge prices of painters plastic and duct taped over all the doors, windows, and openings so that the smell of the honey and all entrances to the place were sealed off.
Here's the two of them in action:
We got the bees to calm down after a day or so, and all of the neighbors are back to normal, but I'm out 200 lbs if honey and likely my entire honeycomb crop for the year. So that kinda sums up why we've been low on honey for markets this month.
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It was a pretty sleepy day on the farm, with my only companions in the field being Ginger the wild neighborhood beast who never, ever stops trying to get me to throw the stick (and surprisingly isn't afraid of my moon-man bee suit) and the always lovely Eden as he prunes the blueberry bushes. I was happy to know someone else was out there in case my truck got stuck, and it's always calming to do hard work with the companionship of others.
In my attempt to get the beehives open and closed as fast as possible, I didn't get time to take many bee pics. I did take a moment to capture something that I saw that couldn't have presented itself at a more perfect moment. Feeling somewhat broken myself lately, my eye caught the smallest new growth coming out of what looked like a broken blackberry branch. once again, nature's metaphor put my own life's drama in perspective. New growth can come from a debilitating break. And I choose to think about my bees in the same way, with hope and trust that from weakness can come strength and from strength can come prosperity.
Side note: as I write this, hours later, I can still hear the gentle humming of those sweet new baby bees, sitting on my hat and crawling on my shoulders. Maybe they think I am queen? No, it's more likely they have never taken an orientation flight and they're a little lost. Not to worry, I got them all back in the hive but for one that came home with me
]]>We had an amazing 6 week run at the bellevue saturday farmers market and will absolutely return there for the full season next year(sorry shoreline!!). We were sorry to see it end on 11/23, as well as many other seasonal farmers markets that have closed down til next spring. Since then it has been a return to pike place, our first and most beloved seattle farmers market. The crowds are still thick and the locals are out in droves, shopping for the perfect holiday gifts.
At the Sunny Honey headquarters in Mount vernon, we have been soooooo busy putting together items especially for the christmas season. Beeswax dipped gift jars in 3 sizes, Worker bee body balm (so popular!), beeswax lip balm, and an awesome summertime stash of Mt Baker Wildflower honey has busily been bottled.
Don't hesitate to send your favorite relatives a unique box of Sunny Honey treats. Each box is carefully packaged, receives a hand written note from the beekeeper, and is stamped with an adorably embossed honeybee stamp on all sides. Supplies are fairly limited, don't miss out!!!!!
]]>Today we are cookin' up a fresh batch of Beeswax Lip balms, as well as more worker bee body balm. With the weather getting so cold and dry, it's nice to have all natural skin smoothers to help fight off the chapped and dry skin so common in winter.
oh yeah, so we made a decision and have decided to lower the price of 16 oz (1 lb) jars of runny honey *for the website only*, just for the holiday season. Stock up on $8 jars of Raspberry Blossom and Sweet Clover while you can!
ok, off to the wax room to get things going. Come see us at Pike Place Market this holiday season, starting 11/27 through 12/30!!!
]]>Wednesday was a gorgeous sunny day (ok, hotter than Hades in my suit), and I went out to the bee yards of Alm Hill to start feeding, medicating (more on that later), and general checking up on hives. About a month ago I put entrance reducers on most of the hives and I think it's made a huge difference with the yellow jacket and bald-faced hornet issues of the past. But wednesday I got to witness something I'd never seen, and that was the active kicking out...and sometimes vicious attacks, of drones from the hive! I guess it's kinda sad, and in a way shocking to see a creature turn on it's own brother, but it's for the best. Btw, i got these stock pics off google images, but next time i'm out i'll try to capture some of the carnage!
]]>Because I rent and not own, I don't have regular access to the honor system honey sales. I f I wanted to, and I did back during tulip season, stand outside all day and sell honey or anything else for that matter, it would be fine. But I mostly don't have the time or desire to spend my days out there. That is, until about a month ago when the honey lady ran out of honey and the stand began to sit empty.
Since 8/2 I've been stocking the honor system stand with my very own honey, each day expecting to be the last, and have had a mostly enjoyable experience. I put out about 10 pints and 1-2 quarts of honey each day, with some days being busier than others and a daily inventory of sales to keep track of what sells best.
Except to my despair, the inventory has become more of a way to gauge how much honey is stolen on any given day. Not everyday, but enough is taken that after a month's time, I just can't justify leaving my products unattended any longer. Last weekend $120 was stolen on Saturday, and just today $45 out of $70 worth of product gone was from theft. In a months time, over $300 in my honey has been taken by a person or persons that, well, I don't know why they do. Maybe they get high off of stealing, or maybe they feel justified for some reason. Maybe it's one person doing the bulk of it, but likely it's a sad trend that so many people take what isn't theirs from a system that relies on personal honor. It takes one bee it's entire lifetime to produce just one teaspoon of honey. It takes me having 67 hives and half the year to produce about 2,000 lbs, which is barely enough in sales to pay my bills. I have $2,000 in taxes from last year that are due by November from just $19,000 in total income from last year. I don't take handouts from the government or family. I haven't bought new clothes or shoes or a purse in years, in fact most of my pants have holes in them. I cut my own hair, do my own nails, and live rather frugally because I've invested everything I have in this business. All because I believe it will get bigger and better and someday more profitable, and because up until this experience, people have been overwhelmingly supportive about wanting local honey and bee products.
So there you have it. If you drive by the honey stand on hwy 99 just south of mt vernon and it's locked up, just ring the buzzer and i'll come out. a million thanks to the awesome, loyal, and honest majority out there, and sorry a couple bad apples had to spoil the whole bunch!!!
Anne
]]>So I'll call it healthy honey whipped cream:
take a quart of plain greek style yogurt (has to be greek, european style wont cut it) and pour it into a fine strainer or cheese cloth. Let set overnight in your fridge over a bowl that will catch all the whey as it separates. What you have left is thick enough to pass as whipped cream. Put the yogurt in a mixer, on low, and add about 3-6 ounces of your favorite honey (depending on taste...oh and we heated the honey up a little so it mixed easier) with a teaspoon of vanilla extract and a little bit of orange zest. The orange zest isn't necessary and could easily be lemon or lime, depending on your taste. Mix this all together and use as a fruit dip or cake frosting or sweet treat topper. It is amazing and everyone will think it's whip cream!!!
thanks to cousin teddy, the kitchen whiz, for making this last june!
]]>While we have had a very early, and very productive, dry summer, the lack of just a little rain has me worried about upcoming nectar flows. Fireweed won't produce much if it's a really dry year, as well as Japanese Knotweed (yes, I know, highly invasive...but makes our only dark honey of the year!).
We have learned that the DNR wants to charge us a bigger fee than we'd like to pay for the use of state land in Fireweed honey production, so todays rainy morning we will try for plan #2 - ask the private landowner!!! While out for a Sunday drive last week, I discovered the Holy Grail of lowland, easy to access fireweed fields. Hopefully by Sunday we can get moved up there!!
Today we are bottling Raspberry blossom, and will likely get it back up on the webstore soon. Raspberry blossom is the base for our creamed honey, so if you are waiting for that wonderful dripless honey, or Cinnamon creamed, the wait shouldn't be long!!!!
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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 little worried that I'll have one Popeye arm and one weak one.
We put our hives right next to the blueberry fields last April and May. The bees don't exactly love blueberry blossoms so they are really likely to fly over them to the flowering kale and cabbage, or dandelions, or maple trees. You can taste a little bitterness from the dandelion and maple, which I think rounds out the sweetness of the honey. It's what I'd consider a light to medium colored and bodied honey. Next up is Raspberry blossom, followed by Blackberry.
I'm debating whether or not to take some bees to new locations for August and September. I have a place in Ellensburg where I can keep as many as I'd like, and have debated making the commitment to drive all that way for years. I'd also love some Fireweed honey again this year, but lifting the hives alone is impossible for me and it's hard to find eager help;)
Keep checking back for updates, and in the meantime here's where you can find fresh Blueberry blossom honey:
The Goods produce and nursery (Bellingham)
Growing Washington CSA webstore (online)
New Roots Organics (online home delivery)
Madison Market/Central Co-op (Seattle Capitol Hill)
Shoreline Farmers Market (Saturdays 10-3 ...I'll be there!)
Seattle City Hall Express Market (Tuesdays 10-2...I'll be there!)
University District Farmers Market (at the Alm Hill Gardens stand)
West Seattle Farmers Market (at the Alm Hill Gardens stand)
Broadway Sunday Farmers Market (at the Alm Hill Gardens stand)
All of the above listed places have really limited quantity of honey and it's best to get to any farmers market early to grab a jar. Thanks everybody and HAPPY SUNSHINE!!
]]>Next Tuesday is the first day for the Seattle city hall market from 10-2 downtown on the front courtyard of city hall, and we will be selling at the South Lake union floating market on Thursdays for the next three weeks (except we might skip it next week because of family obligations!).
When the big blackberry crop comes in, likely in august, we will return to pike place market on saturdays as well. We miss seeing you and hope you can make it down to say hi!!!
oh, and keep your fingers crossed that this lovely month doesn't turn into junuary like in the last 3 years....so far so good!
]]>But for now I must build my honey empire on other peoples land. Very far in distance from my rental house. And get stuck in city traffic both directions.
The lemonade here is that the farther south one travels in western Washington, the warmer and earlier the blooms appear. and the bloom we are interested in in blackberry! Our sumner, wa hives are doing splendidly, with supers on all of them to catch this amazing summertime honey! I was worried about the bees because the landowner said he hadn't see much activity over in their area. I think thats because the grass had grown over the hive in just two weeks time. I got it all tramped down. At the end of the visit, two things were certain: the bees were so happy and engaged that they barely noticed me at all. And I had never been happier to take off that darn bee suit. 80+ degrees outside means 90+ inside!
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When my phone rang twice in a row at 8am with an incoming call from Dusty Williams (Farmer and landowner in Everson, Wa, also a former beekeeper), I just assumed he was pocket dialing me like he had the month before, and I kept sleeping. But then at 10am when I was up and at em, packing my truck and readying bee supplies, he called again, and I figured this was no pocket dial. Indeed he had a bee swarm, a big afterswarm with likely a new queen, out in his pea vines. He didn't ask if I wanted them, he told me to come and get em!
So checking the bees down south would have to wait. I took enough supers and supplies to check all the rest of my northern bees while I was up there, and I even scheduled myself a much overdue oil change at the GREATEST MECHANIC IN THE WORLD, Marlin's Auto on Hannegan and Pole. I headed north. And got 3 miles before the bridge traffic took another 45 minutes to go 5 miles. Ugh
So I got up to Dusty's around noon. By the time I got my truck out in the field, suited up and smoker smoking, it was almost 1. On the hottest day of the year so far, I should have known better than to mess with a swarm at the peak of the day. This swarm was in the most awkward spot, on a fence post in pea vines, so there was plastic fencing, pea shoots, wire, and a pole all to navigate around. I put my bucket under the bees as far as I could and started to brush them down into it. On a cool morning, these bees would have fallen down in big chunks into the bucket, easy as cake. But today they began to fly, refusing to go in the direction of the brush. The pitch of their buzz called alarm immediatly. I got about half of them in my bucket and then stood up, walked to my truck, and thought I'd just give them a few minutes to calm back down and re-cluster.
Except they didn't re-cluster. They pitched into a tornado-like frenzy, spinning up into a column and off the pea vine post. Their buzz was so loud, just as the swarm took off! Fascinated, as (wrongly) assuming they would land close by, I started following them, then running after them in my bee suit, across a quarter mile stretch of a giant hay field. That young queen, combined with a hot day, allowed them to fly far and fast. I was literally a swarm chaser, hot and cursing under my breath, like a mad woman from outer space. If the neighbors were anything but farmers, they might have called the cops.
So in the end, they got away. Which is fine by me. I think Dusty was a little upset that I didn't get them, but I did get a few thousand bees that I added to a weak hive a few miles away (more on that later). I'm glad I made the trip up to see them, as I had never seen a swarm in action before. The event is biblical, super natural, mind boggling. My level of respect for these little bugs and my hippie heart want me to let them swarm any time they want. Except I want them to swarm directly into another one of my boxes! This makes 2 swarms that I've been involved with this year, and hopefully more to come!!! Oh yeah, and if youre local and see one, call me!!!!!
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