2015 in review: conclusions and new perspectives

This post is also available in: Spanish

In a post from our Romanian discussion forums we said that we strive to incorporate some of the working habits of a bee colony into our own work process. Only by learning and understanding as much as possible from the life of these amazing creatures we can take beekeeping from passion to perfection. Therefore, we focused all of our mid-season energy to working in the field. Unfortunately this also meant that we couldn’t find the necessary to post new articles on the blog.

There are many things to be said about a very prolific 2015 season. We will do our best to try to summarize as briefly as we can all the good and bad parts. Hard work, dedication, passion and respect for the honeybee are definitely the necessary ingredients for success in beekeeping. Without further ado, here are the highlights of our 2015 season, as well as some new perspectives for 2016:

1. More than 1000 beekeepers from Romania and Europe have used our queens. The excellent feedback we have received were very motivational; also the fact that many of our customers from the past decided to keep ordering from us is a great honor and an acknowledgement that our hard work paid off. We have also introduced a loyalty bonus by which we want to express our gratitude towards our partners for their trust.
2. There is a trend of an increasingly larger number of beekeepers that poses large numbers of bee colonies, and also beekeeping associations that decided to use our queens. In order to accommodate this, we have created a discount list; even though a proper breeding and selection program implies high costs, we want to encourage the development and progress of beekeeping and hopefully this small gesture will have a big impact.
3. We have received lots of excellent reviews and feedback from Romania and from abroad. Our partners in Estonia, UK and Italy have expressed their satisfaction for our queens and their plans to further extend our collaboration. This is a great honor and responsibility for us. Because apart from our special relationship with them, we also must represent Romania in the beekeeping world. There aren’t many areas where Romania is a top country and with some hard work, proper planning and a strong will to learn it can become a real landmark in the beekeeping world.
4. For the 2016 season we estimate a production of at least twice the number of queens from the current year. Therefore, we need the logistic to achieve these numbers and the first step towards this was the acquisition of incubators. Below you’ll find a few photos with queen larvae on the seventh day since grafting:

   

   

   

   

   

   

   
   
5. The excellent honey production and harvest allowed us to extend or fleet of vehicles. We can now state that we have excellent off and on road capabilities.

   

   

   

   

   
   
6. We have also extend our team. We have 3 new team members that will definitely make a difference and help us progress. We would like to apologize again for the delay in shipping some of this year’s orders by one or two weeks during the month of June. As some of the causes of this delay were organizational, we have decided to have someone to specifically deal with organizing the orders and shipping.
7. The high demand for swarms on Dadant frames and package bees meant a great increase in production for this segment. For the first time, you can now order them from our online shop.
8. The increase in the number of colonies meant we constantly needed new hives, supers or frames; also, we wanted to further extend our lineup of products. Therefore, we started to produce our own wooden hive equipment and we’ll soon present our own model for 2016.
9. Last, but not least, we want to be even more involved in helping out other beekeepers. We will continue to present with total transparency everything we do, but this time with a big increase in photo and video quality. In order to do this, we have bought the necessary equipment:We want to thank everyone for their support and trust and given the fact that in the beekeeping world the year basically begins in the Autumn, we want to wish everyone a great new year!