The calm before the honey storm

Busy crew working in the yard.

What's new on the farm:

Happy Summer! Since our last newsletter, we've been busy doing housekeeping tasks to stay on top of the farm and the bees.

Now that we are approaching July, the harvest season isn't far away. Once that starts, things get crazy around here and we don't want to fall behind.

Each apiary site where we keep our bees needs a bit of maintenance to keep it tidy and easy to move equipment around.

We mow around all the hives so that our hand trucks are easier to wheel in the grass.

We're taking out old frames from the brood boxes and replacing them with newer ones.

The brood boxes are where the young bees, larva, and the queen live year round. The frames are what the bees store food in and the larva grow inside.

Refreshing the frames on a regular basis helps the hive stay clean and healthy.

We've also started putting honey boxes on top of the brood boxes. The honey that the bees store in the honey boxes are what gets harvested and extracted.

The bees start to fill up these boxes when they have run out of room in the brood boxes. This happens when the honey flow begins and the flowers in the fields are releasing lots and lots of nectar.

The bees will be working like mad to collect all that nectar to bring to the hive, and then convert it to honey.

In the Kitchen

On another note, the two creaming machines I wrote about in my last email finally made it through customs!

We have installed them into our tiny kitchen which now feels even smaller.

We packed our first batches of honey from them last week, and we are starting to catch up on our orders. That is a huge relief!

It also gave us some room to stock up on our flavored honeys.

In a few weeks' time, I will be announcing a new flavored honey to enjoy over the summer season. Any guesses on what it might be? Hint — it's fruity!

How does honey help your life?

If you're reading this, you've either tried our products or you are interested in honey.

You might be aware that we are a very small family business. It's me, Andrew, and a team of 6 people who help us with all the beekeeping, kitchen production, and packaging/shipping.

You likely found us through Facebook or Instagram where we do most of our advertising.

It's been the best way for us to reach new customers, but it's also very expensive. We don't have a big marketing or research budget, but we do have some fantastic people like you who read our newsletter!

I'd like to ask you a favor by getting your feedback on these questions:

• Why do you eat honey?
• What are you looking for in your honey or sweetener to help it improve your life?
• If you have purchased our honey, how has ours benefited you?

We love running this business because we believe we're making food that is good for you. Knowing how this helps you, helps me create better content to reach more people to help them too!

Please click here and share your thoughts!