the tree stand enterprize

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the tree stand enterprize

Postby aunt betty » Sun May 06, 2018 3:41 pm

About 5 years ago I found a little pile of my dad's old tree stands. Home made but extremely well-engineered.
He had parts to make more so I did. Tried marketing them. When I discovered that the "pokey" part of the stand was illegal in some states that ended my deer stand enterprize...or did it?

Re-purposed them as a way to position a bee box on a tree to trap warms of bees. There is an attractant called "swarm commander" that mimmicks queen pheromone and the stuff really works. At $150/swarm I'm making more catching bees than I could ever have made selling them deer stands. :)
Caught me another one today. Beats the hell out of climbing way up on an extension ladder.
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Re: the tree stand enterprize

Postby aunt betty » Sun May 06, 2018 7:50 pm

Once it's in a box like that it's worth more.
A "swarm" (with queen) caught by shaking it into a cardboard office box with screened vents is $150.
Sorry my op was a bit misleading. That one in the tree as is would be worth about $200 give or take. It's a whole shit-ton-o-bees. Like 6 pounds easy.

I run about 40-ish hives. Right now today I think I have closer to 30 but they split and swarm etc.
Last year my hives produced around 2000 pounds of honey. We sell it locally just by having a crude sign in the yard.

Your commercial guy probably sells bees but I don't sell them I just know what they're worth.
I catch my own swarms and sometimes I get a call from the fire dept or county sheriff to go get some bees.
It's something to do on the off season to keep from being bored all non duck season months.
Bee season pretty much picks up when snow goose season ends then ends right when duck season starts.
Sweet little hobby.
I've heard that it's incredibly stupid to fuck around with a crazy man's head.
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Re: the tree stand enterprize

Postby Rick » Mon May 07, 2018 4:25 am

Here you have to pay a couple hundred bucks to have a swarm removed, as area bee keepers apparently want a more domesticated variety from California. Learned that when Clark had this nice mess in Cherry Ridge's camp:

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Re: the tree stand enterprize

Postby aunt betty » Mon May 07, 2018 8:47 am

It's $300 and up to do a removal. It's messy and takes a long time.
This one was $1500 and had only been there a week maybe. Small little colony. Not a lot of mess just a quick cutout, nail everything back on, seal it up, and split. It gets real expensive if it gets any higher.
The company that built them apartments, huge complex, had a shitty roofer who couldn't use his snips or something. It's a freaking bee gold mine. The framers were shitty too. Their angled cuts on every rafter are wrong so bees can get all over inside the roof. No habla Ingles (I suspect). But they do such good work!!! lol
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That one looks easy Rick. Down there they have what we call "Africanized" bees that are "killer".
I'm just far enough north to where there aren't any Africanized bees.
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Re: the tree stand enterprize

Postby Deltaman » Mon May 07, 2018 10:18 am

Had them get under the boards on my house, where it changes from brick to wood on the 2nd story about 20 years ago. Called an Apiary to see about having them removed, and was given a quote of $350 :o . Being married with kids....... and poor, I opted to get rid of them myself. Thinking back, wish I wouldn't have, but you know hind sight..........always 20/20 :( First attempt was a squirt gun, loaded with with liquid Sevin, but I couldn't get it up under the boards enough to kill them. Went and bought one of those old school type pumps, that used dry Sevin dust, and had a 2' length of tubing and a flat nozzle to get underneath the wood.
That did the trick, as I was able to pump enough of the poison into the crevice and end the siege. Damn sure didn't want walls that hummed and oozed, like some of the horror stories I've heard. Reading now about the lack of bees makes me feel guilty for exterminating, but damn if a neighbor didn't stop me just the other day, and he has the same issue now.
"It ain't what you don't know that gets you in trouble. It's what you know for sure, that just ain't so"
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Re: the tree stand enterprize

Postby SpinnerMan » Mon May 07, 2018 10:27 am

Deltaman wrote:Had them get under the boards on my house, where it changes from brick to wood
It was yellowjackets and not honeybees, but we had them move in just above the spigot for the hose. How the hell are we going to kill these damn things? I was about 17. I collected all kinds of bugs when I was a kid, dab the cotton ball in rubbing alcohol and toss it in the jar. Let me try that approach, it won't work, but not a better idea at the moment. Took a bread pan, the right height for the gap between the spigot and the siding, filled it with about an inch of rubbing alcohol and slid it in to the space. And to all of our amazement it worked. The vapors sucked right up into the nest. And OMG are there a lot of yellowjackets in a nest. Most ended up dead in the bread pan.

Dave in AZ wrote:Like do you run any hives yourself for honey production, etc.?

As he said, he sells quite a bit. And I can attest it is very good. I got some from him a couple years ago :thumbsup:
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Re: the tree stand enterprize

Postby aunt betty » Mon May 07, 2018 12:17 pm

The coolest thing about the honey sales is having people tell me that they never had honey that tasted like honey before.
One lady calls it "liquid flowers". It feels good to hear that sort of thing.

The stuff at the store has been "messed with" to the point where it's no longer considered honey.
By law in the USA honey MUST CONTAIN POLLEN however...the guy at the store can't be having honey that crystallizes on his shelves so they heat it and filter it thru a 50 micron filter. Pollen is around 90 microns so it gets filtered out. The pollen is the "seed" for the crystals. No seed, no crystals.

The USDA dropped the ball on honey a long time ago.
They have zero fucks to give about Chinese corn syrup being marketed as honey. (as long as they get their cut)
The store honey pretty much all tasted the same.

I do weird shit like buying all the different brands of cola to see what I like best.
We bought 6 bottles of honey at Meijer's and they all were pretty identical despite being bottled in three different states.

After getting bees and sampling different honey from different seasons opened my eyes to "honey isn't just honey".

Hey guys I'm not trying to use this site to market any products. It wouldn't be right to not pay Olly for the privilege.
If you absolutely got to try some pm me. It can be arranged.
Acorn (new member here) used to buy a lot until his doctor told him to quit eating sweets (I think).
Point is that I've shipped to Kentucky.
I've heard that it's incredibly stupid to fuck around with a crazy man's head.
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