Grant F. C. Gillard

Gillard5 @ charter.net

www . Slideshare . .net

Frugal: best use of

one’s time and money for the most optimal result.

“Penny wise and pound foolish”

--Robert Burton

“I started keeping bees so I could produce my own honey and save money. Then I found out it was cheaper to just buy it from you.”

Best use of time and money:

Some people have more timeSome people have more money

Trade-offs and priorities:

Buy new or used?Buy equipment or make it yourself?

Raise queens or buy them?Split hives (queen) or buy nucs?

Learn to be frugal, Where you can save money, and

Where it pays to pay.

Beekeeping does not have to cost a “wing and a stinger.”

Beekeepers are notoriously cheap.

“If I can save some money by not [insert a sound, proven management technique that costs some money] I’m sure my bees will be just fine.”

Beekeeping is expensive. Where can we save a dollar, and when does being cheap cost us more in the long run?

Beekeeping is expensive to initiate $400 per hive, and we suggest two hives

$250 for equipment for one hive

$150 for bees to stock the hive

$500 for personal equipment

$500 for harvesting, extracting

$150 the following year for another set of bees for each hive that died over the winter

“People who don’t know how to cook should not buy

expensive meat.”

Cheap – a minimum expense

Tight (wad) – like the bark on a tree

Stingy - miserly, Scrooge-like

Penurious – oppressive want

Thrifty – an economy of expenditure

The “Free Lunch” –

getting something for nothing.

“Some people know the

price of everything and the

value of nothing.”

Some people buy up the opportunity while the rest of us are

wondering what it costs.

Frugality is a mindset that recognizes opportunity.

Best value for the expenditure of time, energy and money.

Think: highest dividends on the

investment of a resource.

Think: Efficiency not expediency.

Short run:

cheap, assembled, painted, ready to go

most fit Langstroth measurements

Middle run:

may need another coat of paint

may need some trimming or repair

may need clean up from mice and wax moths

Long run:

short life span (dry rot, pre-rot, weak joints)

disease potential (?)

not approved by Martha Stewart

Inexpensive and affordable

Got me going – my “gateway drug”

Allowed for expansion

Served me for a couple of years

Bees produced a honey crop

Money reinvested in new equipment

Confession: rehabbing is relaxing

(but time is money)

Synthetic chemicals they are expensive

time and labor to treat/remove

disruption of hive, collateral residuals

“Natural” treatments so much cheaper

questionable effectiveness, more labor

variables of homemade concoctions

**homemade powdered sugar.

Do it for the right reasons (not justified laziness)

Need the right bees (not commercially-raised “box” bees)

If all your hives die, what was the cost of this “education?”

2:1 sugar syrup“I have to feed 1:1, I can’t afford 2:1”

Candy boards – labor and timeAlternatives: HFCS Inexpensive insurance

$10 worth of sugar to insure against

$150 replacement nucs

“Cheap” worries about the cost.

“Frugal” weighs the benefits.

Being cheap obsesses about the inputs.

Being frugal anticipates the outcome.

Being frugal is not just about money, but time, energy, opportunity, and ultimately success and enjoyment.

Hive Stands Pallets – hardwood, two or three seasons Used lumber – one season New pine $2.69 – two seasons New pine $2.69 – three to four seasons*

*painting with penetrating oil fence stain

Pressure treated $3.79 – still looking good $4 difference per hive stand Labor to assemble, replace and re-level.

Polystyrene Foam Board Covers 17” x 21”

1” at $14.99 yields 1o covers = $1.50 each

Wind issues, needs weights on the corners

Need painting with latex paint, UV rays

Mouse bait

Dysfunctional hive – pheromones all out of kilter

Requeen?

Replace hive with another. Take LW colony and shake bees out in the grass, ten feet in front of colony?

Move LW colony out into the grass about ten feet, leave alone. Field bees fly back to adjacent colony. LW dwindles, then move to another bee yard and shake any remaining bees into the grass. Salvage the comb.

Beware of small hive beetles invading LW colony.

“Beekeepers often waste way too much time trying to pull a dwindling, dinky colony or a

terminally destitute nuc out of the death spiral. The investment of time and energy

has a non-existent dividend.”

Cut your losses and nurture the winners. You’ll be ahead in the long run.

Time intensive, no procrastination

Requires special equipment

Requires skill at grafting

Requires multiple hives – cell builder

Five or six queens “pays” for extra equipment

Quality of locally-adapted, non-banked

queens without shipping stress and DOA

Buy them from Kelley, 2016 catalog, 10-frame Assembled – 1 @ $26.95 (5 @ $25.30) Unassembled – 1 @ $21.95 (5 @ $19.55)= $6

Buy a six-foot, 1 x 12” board from Menard’s Standard $7.09 ($4.99 on sale!) Quality $7.64 ($5.79 on sale!) Select $27.09

Wood working skills? Tools in your garage?

Value of therapy, pride in workmanship

What’s my time worth, opportunity costs of what else I might be doing (catching up on Facebook?)

Salvage scrap lumber from dumpsters, cull piles

Pay for it Hire it done (pre-cut, assembled) Incur out of pocket expenses Ideal for those who have more money than

time and energy

Make it happen Do it yourself (basically pay yourself) Invest sweat equity Ideal for those who have more time and

energy than money

Don’t paint them

ECO Wood Treatment (Kelley)

CopperCoat (copper naphthenate) - Menards

Paint with top quality, exterior house paint

Prime first with primer coat

Buy mistint paint (when available)

Dip or soak in Linseed oil/paraffin Google: “USDA Forest Service FPL-046”

Dip/boil in 1 part gum rosin and 3 parts paraffin (Mann Lake) 180 – 215 degrees for 15-20 minutes

Out of pocket costs to protect my investment

How many hive bodies will one gallon cover?

Does it need two coats?

How much time does it take to apply?

Clean up - do I need to buy paint thinner?

Should I hire the neighbor kid to paint?

Do I need to supervise the kid? (my time)

**Real Issue: Longevity of my boxesThink: investment in woodware and rot

**Secondary Issue: Is my choice of treatment safe for the bees and my honey?

**Longer-term Issue: If I decide to quit keeping bees, can I sell my equipment?

Think: What is the value and can I get my investment back?

21 colonies with bees, haven’t been touched in three years.

5 swarms traps with bees

Boxes and hive bodies

Rabbet - 7/8” not 5/8”

Width - 14” not 13.75” 16.75” not 16.25”

Depth - 20” and 20.5” and 21”

Height - 8” not 6.625 10.75 not 9.625

Buying stuff that does not fit conventional Langstroth hives.

(Time to rework to honor bee space?)

A lost opportunity

because I’m too cheap.

Discovering I’m a day late, a dollar short.

Money loves speed.

New:

Needs assembling and painting

Quantity discounts, free shipping

Used:

Clean up, wax moths and mice

Useful life, does it need repair?

Make your own:

Will it fit Langstroth conventions?

Retiring beekeepers:

Take it all, no cherry picking.

Is any of it “home made?”

Auctions: spend all day waiting, only to be outbid by straw bidders (by-bids)

Want ads –

“wanted, used beekeeping equipment”

If you’re new to beekeeping…

Nucs

More expensive

Three weeks ahead of a package

Packages

Less out of pocket cost

Issues with queen acceptance

Complete hives – typically been ignored/neglected

A good value for the money $200 - $250

Heavy to move, must be moved at night

Get some old dark stinky comb from a beekeeper or one of your dead outs.

Set up a bee hive right where you want it. Reduce the entrance to 3” (Tom Seeley)

Buy “Swarm Commander” a swarm lure from Kelley Bee. Follow directions. $30

Buy lemongrass essential oil, rub a little on the entrance every week. $8

Wait.

(It’s like fishing, or sitting in a deer stand)

Reverse Split: early spring, or any time

Remove the queen, two frames of brood to a nuc (is that queen marked and easy to find?)

Allow the fully-resourced colony to raise their own queens, “On The Spot” “Coweta”

Extremely efficient requeening

Effortless, stress-free

Nucs advocated by Jamie Ellis (U of FL) and Michael Palmer (Vermont)

If you’re going to make a split with a mail-order queen, you need to find the old queen. Marked queens are easier to find and saves time.

If the colony has capped queen cells, has the old queen left? What’s that other, unmarked queen doing walking around here?

How old is that queen? If the colony is dwindling, are you looking at the old queen or a supersedure queen? Do you need to order a new queen?

How did the queens do from that producer XYZ? Pay the extra $1.25 and order her marked

Laundry room

Kitchen

Basement

Garage

Converted old greenhouse

2-frame, hand-crank, tangential

4-frame, hand-crank, tangential

No bathrooms, no septic, only gray water

No legally-hired employees

Transfer, straining honey by gravity

Still store honey in 5-gallon buckets (easier to blend, easier to warm up when granulated)

Not about what something costs, but what it saves or what it returns as a dividend.

Don’t throw good money after bad. Cut your losses.

“Cheaper in the long run.” -- Useful life

Best value for the investment of time, energy and money.