Well, I made it to the state convention in plenty of time. I arrived in Haines City, FL about 9:30 pm on Wed. Oct. 31st. Spent the night and made it to the Holiday Inn in Winter Haven at about 6:45 am Thursday. The first activity was for the CEU’s for the pesticide applicators. I do not have that license, so I listened for a few minutes and nearly went to sleep. That’s when I decided to go and have coffee. I then looked at the schedule and found that the next activity was at 6:00 that evening. It was a fish fry that was hosted by the Florida State Bee Inspectors. That I could attend. That night I drove to Orlando to spend the night with my son, daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren.

The next morning I left at about 5:30 to go back to Winter Haven for the all day speakers. We received a good deal of information, so much so that I will be reading and studying my notes for several weeks to be able to ingest all that was said. The speakers were from Florida’s Plant Industry, University of Florida at Gainesville, and Farm Bureau. We also had a speaker from the National Honey Board (NHB).

That evening was the awards banquet and auction and the guest speaker was Marty Bolin, President Pro Tem on the Florida House of Representatives, (R) from Winter Haven.

Saturday was the day I wanted to attend the Hands On workshop for beginners, no such luck. Someone sent the newspaper reporter to talk to me and she kept me for about 3 1/2 hours. I had a little paragraph in the whole article. Oh well! That is the life of a little beekeeper.