It’s almost Honey Harvest Time!

We plan to be at the Conway Farmer’s Market on May 16th & May 30th, and again on June 13^th & June 27^th.

Market Line-Up:

• Micro Tomatoes
• Garlic
• Cinnamon Rolls
• Baklava
• Homemade Soaps and Beeswax Products
• Fresh Honey – (When the bees allow)

Bees

It’s been a rather dry spring, but our Honeybees made it through the winter. Last fall, we ended the year with five hives, and we harvested honey from only two hives last summer. This year, with splits and one of our own hives swarming into a natural split, we have over fourteen hives! A proper apiary.

We ordered five new honeybee Queens this year from California for our splits. They came well packaged with little nurse bees in these cute little boxes, and we were very pleased.

Then, we ended up needing three more that we had to purchase locally to get them quickly.

We probably wouldn’t have needed the other three, but George had rehomed a couple of older queens before we knew we needed them. But, they went to a very good home!

Farmer’s Market

I know the market opened in April, but we are just not ready yet. George was out of commission for the whole month of March, so he didn’t get seeds started. Also, the neighbors’ chickens and guineafowl ate all the green tops from our carrots.  They started growing new tops, but the carrots have gotten so large that we just don’t think they’d be any good now. We did learn that letting our own chickens out kept the Guinea’s away; they must be territorial.

He still wants to do seed starts, and we will – I’m sure – pick that back up for fall. But growing things in the garden has been a little discouraging while fighting the elements. We are focusing on bee farming with all these new beehives, and we are plenty busy with that.

Family

We had a wonderful Easter with family, and I hope you all did too. Family time is the best, and we love watching our great nephews and nieces grow, play, and hunt for eggs. It’s so different from when we were children dying and hiding real eggs and finding them all nasty days later. Now, they count and color-code all the plastic eggs and fill them with candy and coins. I wonder how the next generations will do it.

♥Bee Blessed♥

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