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Bee-Odorant needs work...version 2 is here, now with cocoa butter and vit e!!!

Back last spring I got the idea to mix up a few tried and trusted ingredients to make a simple and effective beeswax based deodorant.  I heated up one part beeswax to 5 parts unrefined coconut oil, baking soda, and corn starch.  I added three different essential oils: Clary Sage, Cypress, and Tea Tree.  The mixture was both effective in staving off my and my roommates BO, and that of a number of my market friends, all the while having a lovely and clean, yet gender neutral scent!   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!...

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Mid summer update

To say i've been a busy bee this summer is an understatement.  The pike shop is sailing right along and busier than (hoped for) and expected.  We added 9 flavors of honey straws to our front shelf display and they seem to attract an almost constant stream of shoppers.  Our honey soaps and beeodorant are both new-ish additions to our body products line and have also been very well received!  We are blowing through honey almost as fast as we can bottle it, with two varieties from Eastern and Central Washington brought in to fill the shelves before our own western washington honey was ready.  We are almost completely sold out of 2014 sweet clover and the buttery thick moses...

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Spring feedings and hive inspections

After taking a quick break to visit family in Chicago, It's back to the business of beekeeping for me.  Spring has sprung at least 6 weeks early this year, and before you know it it'll be swarm season!  In fact, I saw dandelions blooming in seattle today..its february!!!! 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...

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Barrels and barrels of new local honey!

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...

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