The American Honey Producers closed out another annual meeting this morning. I appreciate that most of the sessions are only thirty minutes at this meeting. Most of my academic conferences require much more time commitment on any given topic--something like ninety minutes to two hours most of the time. It's good to encourage concise delivery and to keep the brain from overloading on any particular topic. Here is the outdoor gallery where we held most of the sessions. It was a synthetic hoop-type building in the Doubletree's patio area--an interesting solution that I had not encountered at a conference hotel previously. One of the opportunities at the national level conferences is chatting with some of the major vendors that we buy materials from throughout the year, and those that we might do business with in the future. I'd probably need to put up another building before I would have space for the air ram extracting line that Cowen Manufacturing had on display. Perhaps one day! Here is the nifty nameplate they put on the system for this conference: We went the budget route by getting a multi-purpose skid steer for our near term needs, but here is the real beekeeper's forklift rolling into the vendor show. They are pretty awesome for the migratory bee world handling many semi loads of bees. A & O Forklifts up in Michigan is the outfit occupying this niche market: On the plane ride home I'll think about the main topics of interest and make a few comments soon. For now, Phil is fulfilling his lifelong love of reading a local paper before leaving town: The boarding call is issued! We now wish ourselves a safe journey home!