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Building Beehives – Time is Money

Beehives beg to be built from scarp lumber. With the outside dimensions of 16-1/4 x 19-7/8, even seemingly useless construction scarps can be used.

This year, I plan to make a Vlog series on how to start beekeeping for zero dollars.

I have built hives from old pallets. When people hear that, they immediately start posting comments about chemicals in pallet wood. Well I have built about 12 hives from pallets and they are all doing fine. I simply made sure that the pallets were clean and unpainted.

However, if you have ever tried to disassemble a pallet, you know that it is a time sucking, board breaking, pain in the ass! So if it is in the budget, it is much easier to just buy lumber.

In a previous blog, I showed how deep supers can be built from 1x4’s. However even with that, I estimate that the lumber for 63 hives (top, bottom, one super, and ten frames) will cost $851.61.

Why 63? When trying to figure out how to cut the wood with the least amount of waste, 63 was the magic number.

Similarly, I estimate 63 supers with ten wood frames each would cost $592.00. These are of course only estimates and the actual cost so far seems to be around 120% of that number.

My goal for 2019 is to make 100 hives with two deep supers each. I already have enough equipment for 25 hives (17 of those have bees already). That leaves 75 hives. Even conservatively speaking that comes out to $1718.58 worth of lumber. Ouch!

I produced enough honey in 2018 to cover that cost but I’m cheap and I’d rather keep some of that money for other projects.

So when I came across (18) 6’x2’x2’ crates made out of quality yellow pine 1x4’s and ¼” plywood… well the cheapskate in me couldn’t pass it up.

I spent seven hours yesterday, with the help of my nephew Zane, disassembling the crates. Pulling the boards apart was easy but removing the wood staples from the plywood was monotonous to say the least. Over the course of seven hours I removed 2160 staples. I still have six more crates left to do but I already have over 400 board feet of 1x4’s ($250 value) and 32 2’x4’ sheets of plywood ($175 value).

Once I have disassembled the remaining crates, I will have saved nearly $700. That makes my time (and Zane’s) worth $66.67 an hour.

“A penny saved is a penny earned” – Ben Franklin

One last note on my nephew, Zane. That 13-yo kid produced as much work as any adult could have. I started working 2 hours before he arrived and disassembled 2 crates but once he was there, we were able to do 2 crates an hour – cutting my work in half. He did all of this for free but in the end I gave him $20 as a humble way of saying thanks. I couldn’t be more proud of that kid.

Lessons learned harvesting my first goose.

Let me start with how it all went down. 

I didn’t mean to name the geese but, like an earwig that burrows into your brain, the name Bruce the Goose was named in my mind, even if I didn’t say it out loud. I later named the other goose, Bradshaw after Nick “Goose” Bradshaw from Top Gun.

I invited my son-n-law, Noah and my nephew, Zane (13) over to help. Noah Brought his brother Ethan and Zane brought his friend (whose name escapes me).

The first thing I did was to catch Bradshaw and place him in a cage inside the house. I didn’t want him to watch.

Then we caught Bruce and placed him in an old duffel bag like I had read on Homesteadingguide.com. This turned out to be excellent advice. It calmed Bruce down and helped to make the whole harvest more relaxing.

As I mentioned in an early blog, I had bought a 16.5” meat clever to do the deed with. I made sure it was razor sharp. We also made a chopping block out of six scrap 4x4’s and placed it on a saw horse.

I had intended on placing a string around the birds neck but decided not to because I was worried it might stress it out. I should have used the string.

Once everyone was ready, I gave Zane the camera and had him record it. Since I couldn’t find an instructional video - I will use the footage to make an instructional video later this year.

With Ethan holding the bag, I unzipped it just enough to allow Bruce to peak out.

I removed my hat – it just felt like I should.

Then Bruce, of his own accord, laid his head out across the block (see the picture). That’s when I did it.

The chop severed Bruce’s spine but I left about a quarter of his neck intact. Blood sprayed out and we let the bag fall to the ground.

With his spine severed, I know Bruce wasn’t in pain but it took about a minute for him to stop moving. In the video, you can hear a sad death grown about five or six times – I didn’t notice the sound in real time.

I had been very stressed about killing the bird but when it was over, I felt completely normal. I realized that Bruce was no different than the other birds I had bought from the store over the years – I was just more involved this time.

“I’m not afraid of death; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” – Woody Allen

So what did I learn?

1. The duffel bag is a great way to kill a goose. It calmed the goose down and it calmed me down.
2. Use a string! If I had tied a string on Bruce’s neck, then I wouldn’t have rushed my chop and I would have cut his head clear off.
3. Cutting the head off removes just as much blood as slicing the throat. Countless videos said that if you cut the head off, the heart would stop pumping out the blood. This was not the case with Bruce. The blood sprayed out and when I cleaned him, there was almost zero blood inside of him.
4. Fatten up the goose. I wanted Bruce’s last days to be as happy as possible but allowing him to free range kept him from putting on any weight. Bruce was the skinniest bird I have ever cooked. In fact, he was barely an appetizer.
5. Get a young goose. Not that I had the option, as geese are really hard to find. But Bruce was older and his meat was so tough that I LITERALLY broke a sweat carving him on Christmas.

All and all, this was a good experience and I will definitely harvest more birds in the future. I’m not sure I will harvest a Christmas goose again but only because I made a turducken from scratch that came out much better (so that may be our new Christmas tradition).

Lastly, this is my first blog of 2019. Since I got so much traffic last year, I have moved to WordPress. I will continue to post the same blog on both Honeyhomestead.blog and Thebunglingbeekeeper.blogspot.com for now. However, I encourage you all to become followers on the honeyhomestead.blog site.