Hello, welcome to Good Flow Honey Company. We are a family enterprise in Austin, Texas. Our Honey House / shop is located 20 miles southeast of Austin, in Cedar Creek, Texas. Bees have been an important part of our lives since 1973. I can't really say for sure how or why I got the "bee bug," it just evolved from a fascination with the whole process of pollination and honey-making and the bee's place in nature. When my mother learned of my interest, she sent me The ABC to XYZ of Beekeeping, A.I. Root's 1200 page encyclopedia of beekeeping. I read it cover to cover.
When I took over the care of two hives that had been given to the country school where we taught and lived, I began to become involved with the inner workings of the bee colony, itself. After experiencing some early successes with a handful of hives, I was sure I was becoming an expert. In 1975, Daniel, my son, and I went to Navasota, TX for a six month crash course in queen raising, equipment building, honey production, nucleus hive establishing and maintenance at the Weaver Apiaries, a four generation extended family of serious beekeepers and queen breeders. I became aware that there was a world of experience to be gained. Now, thirty-six yers later, if anything, I feel more humble. Beekeeping is a wonderful, absorbing and enlightening hobby, but a backbreaking, tough and challenging vocation. The fact that I am writing this in midst of yet another horrific drought certainly colors my attitude, but it speaks to a vital aspect of beekeeping; we must operate under the dictates of our planet. Keeping bees in drought conditions is a humbling experience. However, the simple truth that our charges, our bees, have survived 100,000,000 years through all of earth's variable (sometimes violent and inhospitable) conditions is reason enough to stand in awe of this fragile little creature and it's social system, it's infrastructure. We have so much to learn from them. I go out and "work my bees" and if I 'm observant enough, I'm exposed to some incredible science fiction the human would have trouble imagining. Bees are so much a part of this planet, and yet they are so different from humans. Look at one closely! Put on a bee veil, get close to a (friendly) hive, and just observe the interactions of bees coming and going and communicating. Challenging intruders, exchanging nectar, pollen, water... They communicate via pheromones (chemicals relaying scent) and touch. We are just recently becoming aware that they have different levels and intensities of chemical communication. This is much more complex than we ever thought. Bees, ants, and termites have remarkable societies. It's not that sitting back and reasoning the interest and well being of the colony comes first, it just does!That's just the way it is! 1000,000,000 years later!
So, we have several hundred hives in the Austin area. We don't move them much. We used to (it's called chasing flowers) but it can be hard on them, and hard on us, as well. In years of decent weather (read timely rainfall), we'll make new hives from our bees, brood, and equipment and supply them with a queen cell from a reputable queen bee breeding outfit. They are screen caged with several hundred nurse bees to maintain the temperature. Once they arrive we have 24 hours to get them into their future colony. Within a day or so the queen will hatch out and hopefully take her maiden flight and successfully mate with multiple drones (most from our numerous hives in the area). We like a certain amount of diversity for a hardier bee, but we are also countering African-hybridized traits by annually introducing our European stock. It is working but it's a continuous process. The bees will sort it out. Somewhat magically the mated queen will return to her rightful hive, among many, and and begin her duty as an egg layer. We monitor this; we feed; add frames of brood, if necessary, and stay out of their way whenever possible. If all goes well, this nucleus colony can rapidly grow into a full colony, adding 1000-2000 bees a day. Potentially this new colony will produce a surplus of honey. In a good year, our bees average over a 100 lbs. a hive, leaving at least 50 lbs. of honey on the hive. There is an area in the hive -- the bottom two boxes-- that we leave intact. This is the brood nest. This should be full of bees, frames of brood, and surrounded by frames of pollen (protein) and honey/nectar (carbohydrates/enzymes). This is the core of the colony. The honey is harvested by us, when warranted, from the upper shallow supers, or boxes. Central Texas flowers (in a non-drought year) will produce various nectars from April- October. This year, with hot, dry conditions, only the Mesquite tree produced a good nectar flow for the bees. We left most of the honey on the bees.We requeened most of our hives, but we didn't make any new hives other than having a few swarms. We knew the weather didn't warrant taking anything from the hives.
My son Daniel and I do all of the beekeeping and we have one employee, Emilio, who helps with bottling honey and processing honey off the hives. Our beehive numbers are relatively modest because over the years Daniel and I had other duties to perform with Good Flow Juice Co. We have several varieties of honey. We offer "raw" honey, which is never filtered or heated. The rest of our honeys are heated in a "warmroom" to liquuify them and then pumped through a 400 micron filter into stainless steel bottling tanks in our bottling room. The bottled honey is then palletized and trucked into Austin by one of our delivery drivers, Joe or Ernie. In Austin, Judy, my wife, stages the honey orders, invoices it, takes honey orders, and is most probably the person you will speak to if you call. She is assisted in various ways by Samantha, Jennifer, Amy, and Omie --all family members--and Adrian.
We certainly appreciate your loyalty and support over the years. We hope to supply you and respond to you however we can with our honey line. please feel free to call Judy at Good Flow (512-472-6714) if you have any questions regarding our business or our products.
Enjoy,
Tom Crofut
