Apiary Update
6/29/2021: Hives topped with honey supers for production. The girls are doing very well this year, lots of bees and they loved the warm weather early this summer that we had in Northern Illinois. Looks like the recent rain pattern has finally finished so I hope for very good production this year and I’m every bit excited about it. As always, we are conducting mite checks and continue to keep an eye on them. I feel as if beekeeping is a lot harder in this age, I wouldn’t know, as I’ve only been doing it for 5 years and am obviously, very young in the big scheme of things. So this is just my personal opinion but I’m sure veteran apiarists would concur.
Hemp Challenges
I want to say a few words about growing hemp for CBD. I could write a book on this subject but I’ll keep it to a few highlights to ensure I have enough content for my blog. This is all based off my first growing season and the very large learning curve I had to adjust to. So first off, the hemp business is like the Wild West. Everyone wants to sell you something, and it’s hard to differentiate a good product from what that isn’t and that stays true for hemp genetics. Sourcing seedlings was my first challenge. The best advice I have is be cautious who you trust, I was able to find good plants but they didn’t get to me till June 20th which really set them behind. I then hit the dirt and planted 1,000 plants by hand which took me about 30-40 hours of work, luckily I had some help also from my mother and my wife who make a great team. Then it got dry, and I was blindsided with a new problem… how much time it took to water. I’ll elaborate on my next passage. If you got this far, thanks for reading, I’ve always wanted to write a memoir but maybe a blog will suffice so I’ll end with a joke. A virus walks into a bar and the security says “sorry, we don’t serve viruses” the virus responds with “well you’re a shitty host”
nailed it
