A Feel Good Story

That's Major Pena and that's a jar of our honey he's holding. In Afghanistan!!! Thank you for your service to our country, sir, and thank you for sharing your picture with us. The Major just happened to see it in the breakroom at a time when he was feeling homesick. Seeing the label and his hometown listed on the jar made him feel better. We are so honored to be a part of that and we pray he will soon return to his family safe and sound. And we hope we get to meet the Major when he's home!

Pollen & Allergies

Pollens in and around Seguin. My days lately are centered around IT work at the mill or bee and honey work at home. So here's what I see about Seguin! :) The pollen you see here is what is in our local honey and it's what helps me to enjoy the outdoors again now that my sinuses are under more control. Have a great day!

A Flea, a Fire Ant, Thistle and Bees

One weekend, I accompanied Mark to our local Home Depot on Austin Street near Interstate 10. As we drove up, I exclaimed in frightful delight - what a great photo opportunity! I laughed and nearly jumped out of the truck to get a shot with the ginormous flea and fire ant. But then I spotted the Ortho salesman who had just spotted us. Probably my overly exuberant skip. Sigh...I really just wanted a picture standing near or under the blow-up critters but I didn't want to chat about insecticides so we snapped a quick shot and kept moving towards the opposite door. Now, besides this being a photo op I couldn't let pass, I think it's sort of an odd way to lull people over. How interesting to think a flea and a fire ant are appealing in that way. hmm.Now, to a more pleasant visual of the Seguin area, I'd like to share a lovely shot of the thistle that has bloomed nicely this year. I photographed it as I visited bee yards during our honey harvest. Lovely, lovely year for wildflowers. Here it is the beginning of June and we have tons of flowers everywhenuure!

Wisteria and Bees

Good morning, everyone! Just a quick hello from Seguin. Haven't had much time to post as we had a big event this past Saturday for our new beekeepers. Here's a shot of the latest thing to bloom in our yard - upright Wisteria. I love it and so do the bumble bees. Yesterday I saw three of them buzzing around the tall plant. Their flight behavior is so different from our honey bees so I enjoy watching them dart around in start/stop fashion (versus the more smooth flight of the honey bee). Here's a shot of our class from Saturday. We had a SUPER FAB time and now there are at least 24 new beekeepers in South Texas, keeping gentle bees. That's not counting the folks who got a jumpstart on things and picked up nucs weeks earlier. Let's hope we all have a great honey harvest this year!

Pictures, Honey, Pictures

Ever wonder how I spent time? It is still behind a camera oftentimes, but now it's behind a camera at a bee yard a lot. I am very blessed that I enjoy working with Mark and I get to learn about bees while still doing one of my favorite hobbies - photography! Here we are doing a product photos shoot for our new website we are working on furiously. Hope to get it up and running this weekend but we needed some specific product shots of each type of honey we have. It's always a lot of fun to add props and especially nice when we get to include nature in our photographs. I had a lot of fun doing this one.

Trade Days on the Square Saturday April 30

Quick post before bed. Gretchen Bee Ranch will be in booths 36 and 37 tomorrow; that's behind the courthouse on the square (near the gazebo). Come on down for Trade Days and visit us! Please. :-)

Maldonado Nursery

I am sorry it's been so crazy busy, friends! I haven't forgotten about you, I promise! Today I got to visit this awesome nursery in town for a few shots of our honey going into the shop! Exciting news for us!! What I really like is the shot below. Have a great week, everyone!

Lights, Camera, Honey!

Today was dreary pretty much most of the day but we got ourselves to the gym early, had a nice mid-morning snack and then got to work on photographing our company products in the light tent we just got. Developing and building a new company website takes a lot of work and we're still working on several components, one of which is product shots for the online store. That in itself has been a real learning process and challenge for both of us but we are happy to learn. Back to editing. :-) Hope y'all are having a good weekend. We are suppose to have a few great, gorgeous days next week! Yay!

GBR at My Favorite Gift Shop

If you are a fan of Gift & Gourmet (best gift shop in town, hands down), then check out our Gretchen Bee Ranch honey and bee skep candles! They are now available at the store. I'm tickled pink to have our stuff there since it's my favorite shop for gifts. I also am a lucky gal because my honey bee knows I love pretty much anything from that shop so I got a little something for Christmas from there that will come in handy when I hop over to Virginia in a few weeks. :-)

In the picture above, the shop owner has packaged the honey and candle together in cellophane and it is there in the center of the picture, middle of the middle shelf.

Yulefest 2010

Looks like the three day sellathon really wore me out - sick today. Going to post this and then head to bed despite sleeping most of today. Gosh, I simply have no energy and just felt yucky.

We had lovely weather in Gonzales Friday and Saturday as we participated in their Winterfest and had a booth at Santa's Workshop. After the evening parade Friday night, we were inundated with parade-goers and business was hopping and fun. Love seeing repeat customer/friends and making new friends also. Then we went to the icebox Sunday - :-( a non-functioning heater meant a cold full day. I was so tempted to light more candles just to warm ourselves a bit. I think the sudden temperature drop and the lack of heat did me in. Anyhow, here are some of my favorite sights from this weekend (sorry we missed the Holiday Stroll since we were prepping for the shows):



My friend's dad made me a similar lighted post like above several years ago and I still have it. I love it. When we don't put our big tree up due to traveling or some other reason, we like to at least have the holiday post up because it nicely illuminates the living room. We'll probably do that this year.



This booth was very interesting with the man theme pillowcases. Reminded me of my buddy who sewed a quilt with a similar fabric for a friend of hers. lol



This booth was next to ours and was one of our top two favorites! This is Nuluv Nubians and they feature goat milk products such as soaps, lotions and lip balm. Oh, and my favorite - body butters. LOVE IT! They smelled awesome thanks to all the samples they had open. It was nice to be placed next to each other since soaps and candles (and honey) seem to go hand-in-hand in peoples' minds. They were a very nice young family from the Kerrville area. Glad we met them.

Thanksgiving Means Family & Good Eats

Hope everyone's had a great day filled with love, happiness, laughter and good eats. We had a really nice visit with family and then made it back home safe and sound. And we didn't overeat which is good! Wanted to share with you some delicious treats we were sampling this past week.

If you like pecans or want to give some as gifts, then you should really check out Charlie Willmann's orchard offerings this year. The Cheyenne 2010 crop is incredible! Light and with a slightly sweet flavor. It made a great pecan pie but it is also a great snack we much on during the day. Can't wait to share this treat with others.

Below is a shot that includes two other treats we enjoyed this week - other friends' honeys! The amber color honey is wildflower from California and the light color honey is clover from Montana. Both are yummy and I'm glad I get to try them. If Mark wasn't in business, then I would have missed out on these new honeys. I LOVE the clover - smooth and light, just the way I like it. Nice addition to our growing personal collection of honey jars. :-) Should get me through the winter.

If you're going shopping tomorrow (as we are for display stands for our shows next week), then GOOD LUCK! Stay patient and try and have some fun. That's what I'm telling myself already. :-)

Grand Champion Honey!

Hooray for us - our comb honey entry won Grand Champion in the Home Products category. We are very happy and proud as can be. :) Here's where we'll be spending all our time through Sunday.

Come See Us in Gonzales!

Sorry but it's been a super busy week between work and prepping for the Gonzales Come & Take It Festival. Gonzales is a quaint town about 30 miles from Seguin on 90 - come and visit our Gretchen Bee Ranch booth if you are in that area. We're on the square on the side closest to the theatre (can't recall the name right now). We're there through Sunday and so are about 20,000 of our little bees in their snazzy observation hive. You know you want to see them up close! :-) Have a great one, everyone!

Seguin Trade Day Fun

Today was tiring but a LOT of fun - thank you to those who stopped by to visit with us. :-) Always great to see friends (like you fellow blogger, Hope!) and meet some blog followers (hi Lisa T. - sorry we didn't make it over to visit your booth before you left! Next time.) We sold a good amount of honey but what was even better was getting to give customers some face-to-face times with the bees thanks to the observation hive. Very nice and everyone seem amazed by their activities. Pretty neat that we can watch the queen lay eggs about six inches from us. Cool stuff for sure.

Below is one of my favorites during the day's event - this is Dino, is he cool or what? Loved it and had to get a shot. :) Hope you all have a great Sunday! I'm going to crash now. Talk about tired.

Insulator Sky Watch

Happy Friday, everyone! I hope you all have had a great week. Ours has been packed and here are some highlights -

1. We are set for trade shows to sell some honey. I'll share dates when I pull it all together! Several events here in Seguin and one BIG one in Gonzales.
2. Mark's computer died but we have a replacement. Woohoo!
3. We finally got RAIN! And a decent amount, too. I am very happy that our trees and lawns got some great relief this week. A north wind started blowing today and it got down to the upper 80s. NICE for us!
4. We had a nameplate contest at work - I didn't win but I had a TON of fun with it and got to know several coworkers better. It was awesome!
5. I have great friends and I just want to thank them for their love.
6. I got my first paying photo gig. :-) Cool!

Ok, that's enough catching up. Sorry I've been so busy!

This shot was snapped when we spotted them on the way to one of our bee yards. Lovely to see glass insulators in the sunny sky - much more beautiful than the clay ones being use predominantly these days. Aww...reminds me of when Mark and I had time to go insulator hunting when we first met over 12 years ago. Seems like yesterday! lol

Be sure to check out the other cool shots at Sky Watch!

Busy August

If you have wondering what I've been up to lately and why there's a lack of posting, then here's why - honey harvesting time! :-) It has been a busy, busy but truly awesome year for us. We have been so blessed and here's why:

1. The bees are doing GREAT this year thanks to an awesome spring filled with plenty of rain which helped with all the blooming wildflowers. That was harvest #1.
2. The mesquite bloomed way after the wildflowers faded for some reason. That was harvest #2.
3. Last year we harvested about 200 pounds of honey. This year, we got about 3000 pounds! Yes, amazing but true.
4. Mark's successfully split our strong hives and now we've grown from 25 hives to 40 and they are still looking strong.
5. We are having a TON OF FUN together with this bee and honey business. We are very lucky and work great together.

We've enjoyed steady sales since we first announced the availability of our honey and mostly we have been selling to friends, family and folks who knew about us last year. A lot of word of mouth. After our venture into farmers markets and trade days (Marion a couple of weeks ago), we are ready to take on additional shows in the next two months as everyone gears up for holiday shopping. Wish us luck! And I'll post ahead of time where we'll be in case you want to come out and see us. As always, I love to meet new friends. And I'd love to introduce you to our bees - we got a cool observation hive this past weekend!

2010 Honey from Gretchen Bee Ranch

Here's part of the reason we have been so busy lately - honey harvest time! We finished harvesting our 2010 crop and it's officially for sale. So if you want to check out the price list and our bee blog at the same time, head over to Gretchen Bee Ranch!