What a start to the year these first five months have been! After a Winter of building top bar hives and Warre hives in our small shop and getting our store ready for Spring, never in our wildest dreams could we have been prepared for the outpouring of orders and support we'd receive from our friends, family and customers.
By December I was just barely staying caught up with orders, building hives in my shop for hours after coming home from the office. January made it clear that we needed help, and by February we finally got our wood supplier involved in the construction process. In March, however, the floodgates opened, and we found ourselves with dozens of orders outstanding at any given time. Thankfully our customers have been overwhelmingly understanding of our situation, and we were largely able to get everyone their hives in time for the arrival of their bees.
The last two months have been spent streamlining our construction, order and shipment processes, as well as improving the quality of our products. Today violin maker David Rivinus is part of our team, helping us to design new products and improve on their functional and aesthetic quality. Additionally, beginning in late June, all of our top bar hives and Warre hives and components will be precision crafted at a local mill here in Portland, Oregon. All of our hives will continue to be constructed from locally harvested FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) or salvaged Western Red Cedar.
All of our top bar hives and Warre hives will now be constructed using 7/8"-1" Western Red Cedar using all screw construction and dado/rabbet joints, making for much sturdier and longer lasting products than most of our competitors offer. We have hired a professional photographer to update all of our product photos to reflect the new design of our hives. Stay tuned for the updates.
Due to all of these positive changes, we are excited to be able to offer the highest quality, competitively priced top bar hives, Warre hives and accessories in the world. In addition, we will have enough hives in stock at any given time to ship them within 3 days after your order. With hive construction taking place at our mill, we will be able to focus our efforts on innovating and adding new products to out top bar and Warre hive lineup in preparation for the holiday season and the rush of activity during the Spring 2011 beekeeping season.
Today we have shipped top bar hives and Warre hives to 38 states, Canada and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. We cannot thank our customers enough for supporting us as we strive to provide the highest quality products and customers service to the world's foundationless top bar hive and Warre hive beekeeping community!
After an early, extreme spring warm up, the past few weeks have been very cold and wet. We even covered our tomatoes last night just in case. We have worried, hoping the bees would have enough honey reserves for the extended chill. So far, all seem well enough.
In March Matt had the opportunity to take part in Gunther Hauk's beekeeping conference at the Portland Waldorf School. We provided the bees at the event in our most thriving Warre hive as seen in the picture below:
The unseasonable warmth last month had Matt out catching swarms regularly, 11 or so in total, but we haven’t seen any more or had a call in a couple weeks. We did manage to repopulate some empty hives and get swarms to the first few customers that have ordered from us. (For those who are unaware, we provide swarms to customers as we are able – this is especially helpful for those using Warre and Top Bar Hives!)
We expected that hive orders would pick up in spring, but we never expected how many we would receive! We feel very blessed by all of our customers and folks that have attended our classes and appreciated our products and offerings. In order to fulfill all of our orders we found need to further streamline our production and have recently partnered with David Rivinus of Rivinus Violins, who has kindly offered his epic artistry and stunning craftsmanship to our hives. We continue to maintain the quality of our hives, and with an eye to the future and with David’s innovative ideas, we have new plans in store for Top Bar and Warre beekeeping.
While it's been a few months, we thought it would be appropriate to announce on the blog that we have a new more aesthetically pleasing and function leg design on our horizontal top bar hives. Check it out:
While we diligently work to get caught up on outstanding top bar and Warre orders, we want you all to be aware that we also offer hive tools, accessories and protective equipment, making us your one-stop shop for foundationless beekeeping supplies! In addition, we are now one of the first suppliers (if not the first) to offer Abbe Warre’s book “Beekeeping for All,” in print form. Please contact us if you would like to purchase it immediately, or It will be available on our website in the near future.
Next week my dear sister and brother in law will be here, visiting from Texas and we are so excited; January through April has been non-stop busyness. We are exhausted, and ready for the bees to sort themselves out for the summer.
Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers out there, and to the dear queens of the hives!
Spring! Too early. At least two weeks too early as evidenced by the bustle of the bees and the grape vines at my day job. Daffodils and Crocus are long since up, and the cherries are blooming actively… in February! We have seen pollen on many bee legs for the last three weeks. It will most certainly be an interesting growing season.
Early spring has found us cleaning out dead hives, checking on thriving ones, finally finishing our honey processing, and hosting basic bee keeping classes. I can’t believe I’m going to say it but, we actually could have used an extra two weeks of winter to catch our breath before bee season. However, here we are. Our dog, Polly, is completely happy with the early spring, as it means that not only does she get more time outside, but her feet need less wiping before she comes in!
We have our first retail honey customer! Immortal Pie & Larder in Portland, Oregon placed an order for twelve, eight-ounce jars of Bee Thinking honey. The order kept me busy conceiving of initial packaging, and sourcing jars. I am very happy with how it they turned out, as I came up with something eye catching. (I know our customers will be happy when the taste the delicious honey sourced from our hives, all located on organic sites and from foundationless hives. As you can see, I’m very proud of our bees, hives and honey!)
Matt has spent a lot of time building out the store portion of our website. In addition to Top Bar and Warre hives, we are now selling smokers, jackets, hive tools and other bee keeping basics making us a one stop shop for foundationless beekeeping supplies!
Despite the needs and activity of spring knocking on our doors, I know Matt and I could most certainly use a long, quiet, private and very relaxing vacation…
