Our bee population is doing well, with 10 bee hives, we find ourselves in a good position, especially since we had some flowering in February, a combination of heating, the redshift lights, and the CO2. The impact has been very positive according to our apiarists. The colonies are doing well, as they have very little pressure. The key to a healthy hive is not the honey but the number of sealed broods and bee size, uniformity and movement. All indicate that our hives are healthy. According to him, our real risk is if the hives are too successful we could have hive splits...an interesting situation, yet it is a real issue that has to be monitored.
We now have 22 high tunnels, 16 are fully operational and the last 6 will be operational before the end of June. 80% of the production of our original 12 high tunnels is destined for our wholesalers. In the case of the other 10, the new ones, about 75% are destined for our transformation business. Our objective is that 50% of our business will be our wholesaler business, although physically they will continue to handle 85% of our production.
My wife who is in charge of all our processing business has been reviewing business projections and market feedback for our only six transformation businesses, in all cases demand still exceeds supply (we don't count the business of direct to consumer produces, because that's a business run by our wholesalers). The demand/supply balance is difficult to manage because most of our products have short shelf lives, the downside of not introducing any preservatives, we are very limited in duration of storage. Since all our companies sell via the internet, running out of a specific product is not the end of the world, something that would be completely unacceptable in dealing with supermarkets.
As for the chickens, they have long been ordered, and the first batches of chicks will arrive in 10 to 12 days, we will receive 300 chicks every two weeks, until our 1,200 birds have been delivered.
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