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!
