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> Celebrating 10 years with a new/old jar January 18 2021
As of January, we had weathered the pandemic storm of 2020, but couldn’t say the same for our supply chain. The metal lids we use were out of stock everywhere, unless we could wait ’til February. Glass bottles? Well, get in line.
Basically, packaging was our toilet paper, except there wasn’t any to hoard.
That’s when The Mistake Jars came to mind. You see, we made a mistake early in our small business journey. We ordered a pallet of our “tall” jars, which we have screen printed, but we had miscalculated the weight of the honey. Honey is measured by weight, and the jars said they contained 12 ounces and not 10.
That’s right. We have had a pallet of paid-for jars sitting in our barn for years because we made a mistake but didn’t want to misrepresent the product. We kind of forgot about these jars … until the end of December.
Was there a way we could fill the gap in our supply chain, buy some time, by using these jars? Was there a way to use the jars without misrepresenting the contents? Put some honeycomb in the jar to bump up the weight? Could we scrape the 12 off and replace it with a 10?
Well, running a small business is all about learning to be creative with resources, flexible with problem solving and willing to accept mistakes.
That’s when it hit us: we have an anniversary coming up! It’s been 10 years since we officially signed up for this wild ride, so why not turn The Mistake Jars into a celebration of mistakes and creativity? The black-painted jars were our original packaging, and we even won an award for the design, so it could be a fun throwback!
Yep. We’re using The Mistake Jars to mark 10 years of ups and downs. We’re adorning them with a bright special label that both covers the 12 ounces and celebrates our journey.
We are planning a few changes this year, but we want to start 2021 with an acknowledgement of how far we’ve come. We want to celebrate! We want to embrace the flexibility that got us this far! We finally know how to pivot!
Also, we really need to use those jars.
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> Honeybee facts January 06 2014
There is never an end to the questions we're asked about honeybees! Below are answers to a few of the most commonly asked questions. (We saved the best for last.)
• Honey bees fly up to three miles from their hives to collect nectar and pollen.
• It would take about eight honey bee stings for each pound you weigh to kill you.
• Male bees have no stinger and only one job; to mate with the queen. After they do their job they die.
• The honey bee's wings stroke incredibly fast, about 200 beats per second
• A honey bee can fly for up to six miles, and as fast as 15 miles per hour.
•The average worker bee produces about 1/12th teaspoon of honey in her lifetime.
• A hive of bees will fly 40,000 miles, more than once around the earth, to collect 1 pound of honey.
• It takes one ounce of honey to fuel a bee’s flight around the world.
• A honey bee visits 50 to 100 flowers during a collection trip.
• Only worker bees sting, and only if they feel threatened. They die once they sting.
• Queens have a stinger, but they don’t leave the hive to help defend it.
• During winter, honey bees feed on the honey they collected during the warmer months. They form a tight cluster in their hive to keep the queen and themselves warm.
• The queen bee can live up to 5 years and lays up to 3,000 eggs a day during the summer months
• Yes, we get stung.