It was great to see sish in a video, my wife and I had the pleasure of meeting her this past summer, she made sure we got everything we were looking for. I have to say the honey tasting was a very nice surprise, the sourwood was so good I had to get some, even though I had gallons of my own honey, we don’t have sourwood in our area. Shout out to sish for making our visit so much fun, we can’t wait to get back there next year.
Wow, it's nice to see all the tools and behind the scenes things! I can't wait to check out the web store when you get it up and going. Since I started watching you, it's made me want to take a vacation down there and visit your store and meet the gals upfront! I've said it a few times, but you must be so proud of all of them and them of you. It sure shows on their faces.
I appreciate you sharing your operation with the world Bob. It gives the small time operation goals to aim for. As always, great and informative video. ThNk you sir.
In my dreams! After 3 years of dead out honey, I finally harvested about 35# of my first non-dead out early summer honey this summer, Wow! I'll call it northern swamp honey. I'll try to look at the pollen in it this winter when things calm down a bit. Stacking with a forklift definitely takes some skill. I loaded canned salmon into vans in Alaska for 8 seasons. Not for everyone for sure. Thanks for the tour. Take care
Honestly, Bob & co - this is a great video for meadmakers! If only every meadery used drums and a gentle warming room like you folks do, we'd be seeing a higher quality across the board. I'm going to share this video around a bit so folks can see the reality of working with drums, with forklifts and without. Cheers~! -James
I don't remember if Bob mentioned in the video how much a barrel of honey weighs but for those that are curious it's about 660 pounds. He makes it look effortless with those dollies.
Always a good daytrip for me and the wife from Danville ,Ky to your store.The mountains are beautiful and you and your employees are so friendly while we visited. As always thanks for posting 😊!
Hi Bob. I am very happy for you and proud of you. I wish you success. As soon as I arrive in the USA, I will come to you to see everything with my own eyes. If you allow it, of course. Kind regards
I felt like I just visited your barrel storage area and wow, blown away by the amount of barrels. Paperwork is so important and having traceability it key is anything goes south! So right there!! Excellent video Bob! Loved the third barrel movers hinging action! Very interesting! Thank you for sharing!!
WOW what a great operation. I guess when someone come in an ask for a barrel of honey in the back row it will be time to put in a ski crane or tell them if they can get it out you will sale it to them LOL . If I was not warn out an not old an if I was near by it would be a dream come true to work for you. It is so odd to see everyone with smiles on there faces at work. That speaks so good of the people and the company and their OWNERS . I guess the old saying “ you can get more out of honey than you can with crap “an I guess there is no better company in the world to say this about because it is a honey company . Thanks Bob !!!.
For due diligence, you could consider checking regs and standards: or engaging an engineer to run the numbers to reveal the buckling strength of the typical steel drum. Then use that result to give you significant comfort or significant concern about how many to a stack is deemed safe. Cannot run the estimate/analysis as a thin walled steel column because the drum rings and rims, along with dents and dings, are already - pre-buckled - columns.
Hello Bob. I've noticed Louie is really good at operating the fork lift. I always enjoy coming to the store, and I feel at home when I come there. Even though I live over 6 hours away in Virginia.
Bob it's not over kill if it gives you peace of mind.👍Thanks for sharing. I would do it the same way that 4th level is up there a ways, plus that's a lot of value there.
Always great and informative content. Wish you made this video last June. My math puts 2 stacked totes at 51gallons a sq foot four drums about 55 gallons a sq foot. Thanks for all your videos.
Is there a liner of some sort that is in each drum? Also. Are your bees still laying? I'm in Southeast Pennsylvania and just looked in the colonies today. They still have brood and are bringing in pollen. The goldenrod is basically done. But the Aster and believe it or not the farm is still pushing sunflowers in the fields for people to pick. I looked today and the honeybees are on the sunflowers.
I remember extracting honey by hand early in my beekeeping life and filling 5 plastic buckets. I didn't have a forklift but were given clean food grade drums as pictured in your video to poor into them from my commercial mentor. It consisted of me carrying the heavy 60 lbs. of honey, jumping onto my small red Toyota truck tailgate and pouring the golden crop into those 55 gallon metal drums. It took 10 to 12 to 15 pales, depending on how much I filled the 5 gal. ones to the top. Think I delivered 5 - 7 drums with the tailgate down I believe, cross tied 10 ways to Sunday so they wouldn't fall out to HoneyRun Winery who bottled honey and made blackberry mead at the time in those early days in Chico California. Sold it for $1.50 - $2.00 dollars a pound. I didn't have time to bottle my own, just friends and family. Though latter I sold it for wholesale bulk in 5 gallons buckets with or without a gate valve. Boy, times have changed haven't they Bob! 🐝 P.S. Remember those old 60 lb. square rectangular shiny metal tins they sold the honey in back in your early days and time? I think I still have 2 - 4 new ones that an old beekeeper gave me years ago. Funny huh?
Hi Bob, Theres a lotta lotta weight in a drum of honey, aren't you worried about collapsing bottom drums by going 4 high? It seems to me that the rings pressed into the drums to add diametral strength might be a flaw when stacking them. A penny for your thoughts.
The problem is that the drum manufacturers keep reducing the thickness of the sheet metal, and what works one day doesn't seem to work the next. And the chinese dump cheap crap and you can't blame manufacturers for trying to save a buck.@@bobbinnie9872
A lot of careful planning goes into the storage of these drums. Great job! Do you think QR codes will help track the drums and make your job a little easier? Do you have a rodent issue in the facility?
We've been considering going in that direction with scanners but haven't pulled the trigger yet. We have exterior bait traps on both sides of every door and every thirty feet around the building and live traps all over the interior. Any hole a rodent could possibly get through is sealed. So far only a couple of notable incidents where we think one came in with delivered pallets. We keep close tabs.
Здравствуйте. Покажите, как перерабатываете воск. И вопрос: делаете ли сами вощину из своего воска или заказываете изготовление? Может просто меняете воск на вощину?
I'm sure they work in some instances but we don't use them. We would need a different style of drum grabber for the forklift, they wouldn't take a band style drum heater very well if we needed to use one and we heat our warming room through the floor which I'm not sure would work well because it gets fairly hot.
Can you share your thoughts on transporting and storing on pallets? Seems like moving four drums per trip would save lots of time, and reduce the time to place the cribbing on each drum.
I know of several packers that do it that way and it works for them. Our warming room is heated through the floor so we like placing our drums on the concrete when warming.
I always used food grade buckets to store honey, but would love to switch to drums now that I got a forklift. Do you use liners in your drums? If not, is there any coating on the inside? Plastic liners would be a pain for future handling like heating or pouring I imagine. But without it, I am not sure whether the steel would rust or affect the taste. Thanks!
Bare steel drums are horrible for storing honey and actually ruin it in my opinion because of the rust that occurs. Food grade drums like the ones we use have a sprayed on food grade liner on the inside. Even if a drum is well used if the liner is in good condition we will use it. Although some do use additional plastic liners that add safety, and do have mechanisms for handling them, they are a pain to deal with in our facility so we don't use them.
We don't actually have an exactly defined standard. Many drums do come with a bit of beeswax or occasionally a few dead bees. If a new producer is sending drums with excessive debris I simply bring it up with them and ask for a change. If they won't do better I don't deal with them. The regular guys we deal with do a good job of giving us good stuff. All crystallized honey is warmed just enough to clear up before being pumped. All honey is run through a 1000 micron filter on its way to our bottling tanks.
As someone with 40 years in the distribution of foodservice/spirits/construction supplies. I'm surprised that your not utilizing hardwood pallets and tiered racking systems for your warehouse.
Do you sell barrels of honey to individual bee keepers next season I would like two drums if you do. I can't make sourwood very pure don't know what it gets in it. Ben beekeeping 8 seasons have 30 odd colonies some are your stock thank you
Bob, I'd be concerned with the drums that have dents in them being on the bottom. It's like standing on a coke can. It'll hold you until you give it a dent. Have you ever considered racking? and drump pallets? You can get four drums to a pallet, go two drums high per level of rack. (I work in the industry)
Thanks for the comment. You're right about a dented drum and I'll tell Louie to watch for that. Our experience with racks is that they take too much space and take away flexibility with the drums. We are going to start using them more for bee supplies though.
That is a lot of honey Bob. How many barrels per day can you bottle? Could you go into how and why you mix different honeys together on a YT video? Is the blend specific for certain customers? I harvest weekly and date my pails of honey trying to see the differences. The honey that tastes the best goes into bottles and the honey that crystalizes quickly goes into creamed honey.
National bulk honey prices have taken a big dip. In some case the prices offered are below the cost of production. Quite a contrast from earlier this year. Large packers have all they need from a good crop in some areas of the country combined with very cheap imported honey.
Thanks for the tour! Always happy to hear Bob’s voice
Good morning Bob l love your videos! The first thing I do Sunday mornings is watch your video.
As a hobbyist, I enjoy seeing the behind the scenes of the honey storage and packing side. Very eye opening.
I really enjoy the videos from your shop and warehouse. Great behind the scene video. Very inspiring. 👍🏻
It was great to see sish in a video, my wife and I had the pleasure of meeting her this past summer, she made sure we got everything we were looking for. I have to say the honey tasting was a very nice surprise, the sourwood was so good I had to get some, even though I had gallons of my own honey, we don’t have sourwood in our area. Shout out to sish for making our visit so much fun, we can’t wait to get back there next year.
Very helpful Bob, thank you! I’ll have to check if the drum truck I was looking at has replaceable feet. Never would’ve thought of that.
What an incredible operation.
Wow, it's nice to see all the tools and behind the scenes things! I can't wait to check out the web store when you get it up and going. Since I started watching you, it's made me want to take a vacation down there and visit your store and meet the gals upfront! I've said it a few times, but you must be so proud of all of them and them of you. It sure shows on their faces.
I sure appreciate your hard work and attention to detail Bob. 👍👍
I appreciate you sharing your operation with the world Bob. It gives the small time operation goals to aim for. As always, great and informative video. ThNk you sir.
In my dreams! After 3 years of dead out honey, I finally harvested about 35# of my first non-dead out early summer honey this summer, Wow! I'll call it northern swamp honey. I'll try to look at the pollen in it this winter when things calm down a bit. Stacking with a forklift definitely takes some skill. I loaded canned salmon into vans in Alaska for 8 seasons. Not for everyone for sure. Thanks for the tour. Take care
Honestly, Bob & co - this is a great video for meadmakers! If only every meadery used drums and a gentle warming room like you folks do, we'd be seeing a higher quality across the board. I'm going to share this video around a bit so folks can see the reality of working with drums, with forklifts and without. Cheers~! -James
I don't remember if Bob mentioned in the video how much a barrel of honey weighs but for those that are curious it's about 660 pounds. He makes it look effortless with those dollies.
Always a good daytrip for me and the wife from Danville ,Ky to your store.The mountains are beautiful and you and your employees are so friendly while we visited.
As always thanks for posting 😊!
Thanks 👍
Hi Bob. I am very happy for you and proud of you. I wish you success. As soon as I arrive in the USA, I will come to you to see everything with my own eyes. If you allow it, of course. Kind regards
I felt like I just visited your barrel storage area and wow, blown away by the amount of barrels. Paperwork is so important and having traceability it key is anything goes south! So right there!! Excellent video Bob! Loved the third barrel movers hinging action! Very interesting! Thank you for sharing!!
Thanks Richard.
Another educative video, thanks!
WOW what a great operation. I guess when someone come in an ask for a barrel of honey in the back row it will be time to put in a ski crane or tell them if they can get it out you will sale it to them LOL . If I was not warn out an not old an if I was near by it would be a dream come true to work for you. It is so odd to see everyone with smiles on there faces at work. That speaks so good of the people and the company and their OWNERS . I guess the old saying “ you can get more out of honey than you can with crap “an I guess there is no better company in the world to say this about because it is a honey company . Thanks Bob !!!.
For due diligence, you could consider checking regs and standards: or engaging an engineer to run the numbers to reveal the buckling strength of the typical steel drum. Then use that result to give you significant comfort or significant concern about how many to a stack is deemed safe. Cannot run the estimate/analysis as a thin walled steel column because the drum rings and rims, along with dents and dings, are already - pre-buckled - columns.
Hello Bob. I've noticed Louie is really good at operating the fork lift. I always enjoy coming to the store, and I feel at home when I come there. Even though I live over 6 hours away in Virginia.
Hi Mark. Thank you.
Bob it's not over kill if it gives you peace of mind.👍Thanks for sharing.
I would do it the same way that 4th level is up there a ways, plus that's a lot of value there.
Always great and informative content. Wish you made this video last June. My math puts 2 stacked totes at 51gallons a sq foot four drums about 55 gallons a sq foot. Thanks for all your videos.
Thanks for the math. The producers I'm working with are beginning to prefer totes.
Impressive!
We have a lot of full 265 gallon totes we stack 3 high full of liquids often when transporting needs to be single stack though
Great video!
Bob, question. What temperatures in the day is best to stop feeding syrup? 50s?
Upper 50's.
Is there a liner of some sort that is in each drum?
Also. Are your bees still laying? I'm in Southeast Pennsylvania and just looked in the colonies today. They still have brood and are bringing in pollen. The goldenrod is basically done. But the Aster and believe it or not the farm is still pushing sunflowers in the fields for people to pick. I looked today and the honeybees are on the sunflowers.
These drums have a sprayed on food grade liner. We still have brood rearing going on too but it's beginning to slow down.
@@bobbinnie9872 Thank you Bob. I thought maybe a bag type liner. Thanks for clearing that up
Hi Bob. Is the warehouse floor polished concrete?
No but we keep it fairly clean and reseal it occasionally.
I remember extracting honey by hand early in my beekeeping life and filling 5 plastic buckets. I didn't have a forklift but were given clean food grade drums as pictured in your video to poor into them from my commercial mentor. It consisted of me carrying the heavy 60 lbs. of honey, jumping onto my small red Toyota truck tailgate and pouring the golden crop into those 55 gallon metal drums. It took 10 to 12 to 15 pales, depending on how much I filled the 5 gal. ones to the top. Think I delivered 5 - 7 drums with the tailgate down I believe, cross tied 10 ways to Sunday so they wouldn't fall out to HoneyRun Winery who bottled honey and made blackberry mead at the time in those early days in Chico California. Sold it for $1.50 - $2.00 dollars a pound. I didn't have time to bottle my own, just friends and family. Though latter I sold it for wholesale bulk in 5 gallons buckets with or without a gate valve. Boy, times have changed haven't they Bob! 🐝 P.S. Remember those old 60 lb. square rectangular shiny metal tins they sold the honey in back in your early days and time? I think I still have 2 - 4 new ones that an old beekeeper gave me years ago. Funny huh?
I do remember the square tin "60's" as they were called in our area. Glad I don't have to use those !!
Impressive
Bob your honey storage is impressive !! how much does one barrel of honey weigh?
An average drum has a tare around 36 pounds and a gross of 675 to 700 pounds. The drum I was using with the hand trucks was 684.
@@bobbinnie9872 that’s a lot of weight on that shop floor !.. hopefully it never cracks !
Me too! It's a thick floor so hopefully it will hold up.@@NevadaBeeMan-nq3po
Hi Bob, Theres a lotta lotta weight in a drum of honey, aren't you worried about collapsing bottom drums by going 4 high? It seems to me that the rings pressed into the drums to add diametral strength might be a flaw when stacking them. A penny for your thoughts.
I know a number of beekeepers and packers that have stacked four high for some time and so far I've not heard of a collapse. I think we're OK.
The problem is that the drum manufacturers keep reducing the thickness of the sheet metal, and what works one day doesn't seem to work the next. And the chinese dump cheap crap and you can't blame manufacturers for trying to save a buck.@@bobbinnie9872
Golly. Curious to know how well the HDO wood would sell online.
Hopefully well because we hope to be offering it that way in a few months.
A lot of careful planning goes into the storage of these drums. Great job! Do you think QR codes will help track the drums and make your job a little easier? Do you have a rodent issue in the facility?
We've been considering going in that direction with scanners but haven't pulled the trigger yet. We have exterior bait traps on both sides of every door and every thirty feet around the building and live traps all over the interior. Any hole a rodent could possibly get through is sealed. So far only a couple of notable incidents where we think one came in with delivered pallets. We keep close tabs.
Здравствуйте. Покажите, как перерабатываете воск. И вопрос: делаете ли сами вощину из своего воска или заказываете изготовление? Может просто меняете воск на вощину?
Do you have thoughts on the food grade plastic barrels?
I'm sure they work in some instances but we don't use them. We would need a different style of drum grabber for the forklift, they wouldn't take a band style drum heater very well if we needed to use one and we heat our warming room through the floor which I'm not sure would work well because it gets fairly hot.
@@bobbinnie9872 All good things to keep in mind. Thank you for your thoughts!
Can you share your thoughts on transporting and storing on pallets? Seems like moving four drums per trip would save lots of time, and reduce the time to place the cribbing on each drum.
I know of several packers that do it that way and it works for them. Our warming room is heated through the floor so we like placing our drums on the concrete when warming.
I always used food grade buckets to store honey, but would love to switch to drums now that I got a forklift. Do you use liners in your drums? If not, is there any coating on the inside? Plastic liners would be a pain for future handling like heating or pouring I imagine. But without it, I am not sure whether the steel would rust or affect the taste. Thanks!
Bare steel drums are horrible for storing honey and actually ruin it in my opinion because of the rust that occurs. Food grade drums like the ones we use have a sprayed on food grade liner on the inside. Even if a drum is well used if the liner is in good condition we will use it. Although some do use additional plastic liners that add safety, and do have mechanisms for handling them, they are a pain to deal with in our facility so we don't use them.
Have you considered pallet racking?
We have but it's actually not a good use of space for drums. Totes might would work good with that.
Seems that with racking you would not be able to get anywhere near the same amount into a given space. You need to leave pathways for the fork truck.
Is there a filtering standard that your honey suppliers have to go by? What happens if those drums crystallize do you sometimes have to refilter?
We don't actually have an exactly defined standard. Many drums do come with a bit of beeswax or occasionally a few dead bees.
If a new producer is sending drums with excessive debris I simply bring it up with them and ask for a change. If they won't do better I don't deal with them. The regular guys we deal with do a good job of giving us good stuff.
All crystallized honey is warmed just enough to clear up before being pumped. All honey is run through a 1000 micron filter on its way to our bottling tanks.
That is an amazing amount of honey. Wow.
Круто! Молодец дед
Competition. If you hadn’t had your books in order, that recall might of taken you off the market shelf completely,
Totally agree. It was a nervous moment.
Hi Sir where are you located
I wanna visit your plant
6306 Hwy 441 S, Lakemont, GA.
Hey bob, will you be selling any of your equipment that you guys make? I'd love to fill my bee yard with your lids/bottoms
We sell a lot of our lids and bottoms through our store. If interested call 706 782 6722 and ask for Molly.
As someone with 40 years in the distribution of foodservice/spirits/construction supplies. I'm surprised that your not utilizing hardwood pallets and tiered racking systems for your warehouse.
We do for bee supplies but we can't afford the extra space they take when stacking honey.
@@bobbinnie9872 build bigger storage ;)
👍👍👍
Good morning Bob !
Good morning sir!
Time for a new building!
It is. I'm hesitating at the cost of building and the current interest rates.
Do you sell barrels of honey to individual bee keepers next season I would like two drums if you do. I can't make sourwood very pure don't know what it gets in it. Ben beekeeping 8 seasons have 30 odd colonies some are your stock thank you
Yes we sell in bulk. Drums or buckets.
Bob, I'd be concerned with the drums that have dents in them being on the bottom. It's like standing on a coke can. It'll hold you until you give it a dent. Have you ever considered racking? and drump pallets? You can get four drums to a pallet, go two drums high per level of rack. (I work in the industry)
Thanks for the comment. You're right about a dented drum and I'll tell Louie to watch for that. Our experience with racks is that they take too much space and take away flexibility with the drums. We are going to start using them more for bee supplies though.
👍👍👍❤
That is a lot of honey Bob. How many barrels per day can you bottle?
Could you go into how and why you mix different honeys together on a YT video? Is the blend specific for certain customers?
I harvest weekly and date my pails of honey trying to see the differences. The honey that tastes the best goes into bottles and the honey that crystalizes quickly goes into creamed honey.
You have a good strategy. I will try to make a video on our blending process and yes different customers do get different honey. Thanks.
would you care to comment on the current market prices and trend ?
National bulk honey prices have taken a big dip. In some case the prices offered are below the cost of production. Quite a contrast from earlier this year. Large packers have all they need from a good crop in some areas of the country combined with very cheap imported honey.
❤❤❤👍👍👍
Good Morning Bob !
Good morning sir.
I seen a guy use pallets once 4 high is stupidly crazy.
Beekeepers are already a bit crazy !!
Are you interested in a load of Snowberry honey? N ID.
Thanks for the inquiry but no thank you.
The first this morning