A Song of Honey & Soap

I know, I know.  Terrible blog post name but I miss Game of Thrones and it shows.  Things have been so very busy over here that I wanted to provide an update on our past event and our upcoming one.  First the old business!  

We had a phenomenal time at Byram Day.  The weather was gorgeous and you couldn't have asked for nicer people to stop by.  Setup was a bit hectic (I completely forgot to grab the canopy for our tent.  Had to run home and grab it) but it all worked out.  Here's a picture of our booth for those who missed it:

We're so thankful to everyone who said hello!  We had brought our observation hive and really had a blast educating people on the importance and role of honey bees.  I even donned my bee suit for the second half of the event due to popular demand.  I think that may have attracted more people than the bees!  Even the local reporter dropped by to snap some pictures and see the hive.  

So now folks are asking us where we'll be next and we're happy to announce that we'll be at the Sussex County Technical School's Flea Market to benefit the Drama Club and Skills USA.  The event is on October 7th and will run from 8:00am to 4:00pm.  We hope to see you there.  The event is rain or shine.  (It's also the date of their homecoming!)  Address of the event is: 105 N Church Rd, Sparta, New Jersey 07871.

Sadly, as the weather is getting colder, the bees will not be making an appearance this time.  Now's the time of year we're working hard to feed the bees and ensure that the hives have enough honey to get themselves through the winter.  It's a lot of work but we love it.  

Lastly an update on our soaps!  To say that we've been shocked by the demand would be an understatement.  Before offering our soaps for sale we waited until we had 200 bars packed and ready to go.  Amazingly in the first two weeks 127 of them were gone.  We've had special orders for Christmas gifts, anniversary gifts, and even wedding favors.  While we were hesitant to invest into this area of our business it's clear now that there's enough demand and very satisfied customers to warrant it.  

To that end we're making a couple of changes to our soaps.  First, the bars are getting bigger.  Currently we label all of our soaps at 4 ounces (even if most are larger!)  The way we were cutting them though left them rather inconsistent.  To that end we've purchased a professional hand crafted soap cutter.  (That's the second change.)  Now every bar of soap will weigh 5 ounces at the cut and 4.5-4.6 after the cure.  (As the water evaporates out.)  Unfortunately, while fun to use, the wavy cutter just isn't cutting it.  All of our soaps will be flat going forward.  

You can see the difference here clearly.  New soaps are on the left and old soaps are on the right.  

As far as soap types go we currently have nine different bars for sale.  We will not be making any more Tropical Hive until next summer so get those before they're gone.  We'll also be adding two fall scents, two Christmas scents, and by popular demand three that smell a little more "masculine."  We'll be calling those three "Father of Dragons"  "Stag King's Brew"  and "A Soap Has No Name."  Ten points to anyone who gets the references!  

A couple other quick things you'll see from us in the coming weeks: small 1.5oz honey bee soaps, honey sticks, and gift baskets!  Additionally we've updated our site to include a product review feature.  If you've bought something from us please consider leaving a review of it on our page.  

That's it for now.  I'll send out another update when all of these new soaps are ready!  I'll leave you with a close up shot of our Honey Candy scented and Bayberry scented soaps!  Thank you!