Beekeeping Lecture delivered by Grant Gillard at Effingham, IL on February 27th, 2016 on the frugal beekeeper. Beekeeping is expensive, especially for the beginner. But beekeepers are cheap, sometimes too cheap to really benefit from beekeeping.

1. Grant F. C. Gillard
Gillard5 @ charter.net
www . Slideshare . .net

2.  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.

3. “Some people know the
price of everything and the
value of nothing.”

4. Best value for the expenditure of
time, energy and money.
Think: highest dividends on the
investment of a resource.
Think: Efficiency not expediency.

5. Some people buy up the opportunity
while the rest of us are
wondering what it costs.

8.  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
 Hive Stands
 Used lumber – one season
 New pine $2.69 – three seasons*
 Pressure treated $3.79 – still looking good
*painting with penetrating oil fence stain

9.  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?

10.  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

11. “People who don’t know how
to cook should not buy
expensive meat.”

12.  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.

13. “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.

14.  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

15.  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

16.  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

17.  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)

18.  **Real Issue: Longevity of my boxes
Think: 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?

28.  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

29. 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.

30.  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?

31.  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”

32.  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

42.  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)

43.  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)

45.  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

46.  Laundry room
 Kitchen
 Basement
 Garage
 Converted old greenhouse
 2-frame, hand-crank, tangential
 4-frame, hand-crank, tangential

50.  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)

51.  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.