Free Wood - Well not really.

[daveswoodhauler]

Always get a kick out of these posts for free wood.

(broken link removed)

Hmm...lets see.... its free, but you must be insured, tree is softwood, close to the house/fence/outdoor shed/neighbors shed....looks like a deal to me...not.

 

[TreePapa]

Here's a simliar post - not tree work this one, but someone trying for free bee removal

(broken link removed to http://losangeles.craigslist.org/sfv/zip/1071347319.html)

similar thing in that they want someone with expertise and experience to do something that normally cost $$, and carries an inherit risk, for free. This ad should be titled "Wanted - Free Bee Removal" ... just as the one you posted should be titled "Wanted - Free Tree Removal".

Some folks have nearly terminal CRIS.

Peace,
- Sequoia

 

[stejus]

I clicked the link and it says it been deleted :question:

 

[johnsopi]

Rare chestnut tree wood for removal and sale as hardwood lumber (Milton)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reply to: [email protected] [Errors when replying to ads?]
Date: 2009-03-15, 1:48PM EDT



A large chestnut tree with thousands of pounds of wood/many linear feet available to the entrepeneur who will make me an offer in cash, chop it down and take it all away. I have lived here ten years and want to get rid of it. It can make someone some money if you know this business. Available immediately. Make me an offer I can not refuse.




Location: Milton
it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
PostingID: 1076069224

 

[DBoon]

Free bee removal is not as far fetched as it sounds. I know someone who vacuums out yellow jackets from building cavities at no charge - he collects them and sells them to pharmaceutical companies. He comes out in a thick suit with a mesh screen hat, hooks the vacuum up to the nest, and bangs on the wall and the yellow jackets swarm out right into the vacuum.

 

[Gooserider]

As far as the "free" honeybees, I can tell you as a beekeeper that a package of bees purchased from a bee supply place is currently on the order of about $100, a "free" colony isn't necessarily a bad deal depending on what's involved in getting it... I will grant you that there are bee removal companies, which charge handsomely for the service, but will also tackle jobs that are complex where there is a need for extensive demo, heavy duty ladder work, and so forth - but certainly if I saw an add like that one I'd be calling to find out the details.

The only trouble w/ free colonies is that it can be hard to recover one w/o damaging the queen, and if the queen is hurt, it can result in the colony not surviving. (However new queens are still cheaper than entire packages)

Gooserider

 

[johnn]

Guy at work has a Colony in a large Walnut, wanting me to take down for the wood. Another friend at work gave me a number to a Beekeeper who was more than willing to remove for free, to have the Colony, just preferred to do so during dormant season.

 

[Gooserider]

Guy at work has a Colony in a large Walnut, wanting me to take down for the wood. Another friend at work gave me a number to a Beekeeper who was more than willing to remove for free, to have the Colony, just preferred to do so during dormant season.

Hmm... That seems odd, as honeybees don't really have a "dormant" season as such. They can't fly below about 40-50*, but they don't really "hibernate" the way mammals do - instead they form into a cluster that does a sort of "group hug" and shivers to generate heat, keeping the inside of the hive about 90*. The cluster slowly moves around inside the hive eating the stored honey and pollen that it had built up over the previous summer (this is why they do the whole honey thing in the first place...) Opening up the hive during this period is a VERY bad idea as the colony doesn't really have the surplus heat generating ability to get the hive back up to temperature, and can freeze. Taking or disturbing the winter stores is also bad, as it will result in the colony starving...

The only way I'd try to remove a colony in the winter would be to screen over the openings, and then take the section of trunk involved (making sure I got it all!) home, to keep until spring when I'd split it open and transfer them into a modern hive during the spring buildup, when the stores are mostly gone anyway, but the colony is busy making babies and bringing back supplies.

Gooserider

 

[karri0n]

Hearth.com - for all your woodburning advice and needs! also beekeeping discussion!


Good info, Goose. Very interesting.

 

[johnn]

Gooserider: We didn`t have an indepth conservation about the workings of a Hive, and what I know I just learned from you!! Thanks good info! He did however, mention the flying, and inquired about the accesibility of the Hive. Its been a couple years (tree still stands) but it seems he referred to dropping the tree if necessary, to remove the hive. I`m assuming,,he would then take the sectional approach,, this doesn`t seem like a good choice, and what are the chances of success?

 

[Gooserider]

Well I would need to see the tree in a case like that, but if I were to have my choice on it, I'd probably say the ideal situation is to top the tree above the hive section, then do a crane to take down the bee section, trying to keep it in about the same orientation as it was in the tree, and then drop the rest... Honeycomb is amazingly strong for being made from wax, and it is very structurally efficient, but the bees don't build for the kind of shock loads that you would get from dropping a tree, and they also build so that the combs are vertical and are strong in that direction, they might or might not hold up if the trunk were laid over sideways.

The other thing I'd worry about if I were dropping a bee tree without sectioning it down is whether or not the trunk might split apart on impact - it is hollow after all! You would then have the problem of dealing with a LARGE number of seriously peeved ladies (depending on time of year and the hive strength, could be anywhere from 30 to 200 THOUSAND bees in that hive...) Back in Ye Badde Olde Days beekeeper's would use hollowed out logs, known as bee gums (or guns) as hives, and there are some tales from colonial times of frontier beekeepers putting powder charges under their hives - when raiders came calling, light off the charge, watch raiders run away...

The modern "Langstroth" movable frame hive is a fairly recent invention, but it was a major technological inovation that made beekeeping and honey production much more efficient and effective. (It is now illegal to keep bees in the traditional straw "skep" hive)

Gooserider

 

[johnn]

Well since the original post or two wouldn`t pull up on screen, I got one more question to add to all this new learning:

Does the harvesting of Hunny, play the role of determining the number of Bees in a given colony?

 

[Gooserider]

Well since the original post or two wouldn`t pull up on screen, I got one more question to add to all this new learning:

Does the harvesting of Hunny, play the role of determining the number of Bees in a given colony?

Not really - Essentially the population in a hive is cyclical over the course of a year, it is lowest right at the end of winter / beginning of spring, as the queen doesn't lay eggs in the winter, and a lot of the workers will have died off over the course of the winter. As the days get longer, the weather warms up and you start getting some of the very early pollen and nectar sources getting going, the queen turns on the egg machine and will start laying, (as many as 500 eggs / day at peak production) 23 days later you start getting workers emerging from the cells, and the population increases rapidly. This goes on until the population peaks in mid summer, and they start slowing down the queen and start working on building up the winter stores. Towards the end of September she will stop laying, and about the time of first frost they will kick the male drones out to die, and start shifting into winter survival mode.

The limiting factors on the population are essentially how much brood the existing population can care for, the availability of forage nectar and pollen, and how much room there is in the brood chamber part of the hive - if you look at a typical modern hive you will notice that it's made up of a stack of boxes, with a couple of deep boxes on the bottom (the brood chambers) and a variable number of shallower boxes above (the honey supers) - I want to have lots of room in the brood chambers, as if they get overcrowded the hive will swarm, which hurts my honey production... I do this by adding honey supers to the hive so that the bees put their surplus production up in there, rather than down in the brood chambers. At the same time, I really don't want the queen making babies in my honey supers, as I can't harvest them w/o killing the brood (future workforce) It doesn't really matter if I take the surplus honey away for harvest or if I keep adding empty supers as long as I make sure the bees always have enough room not to want to swarm.

There is a fair bit to learn about how to manipulate the hive in order to make it do what the beekeeper wants - and some of it is as much art as it is science, but it isn't terribly difficult or time consuming. Beekeeping is in some ways one of the least labor intensive forms of animal agriculture, but you also have to remember that unlike other sorts of animals, there is NO difference between "wild" and "domestic" bees - thus the relationship is not so much "caretaker" as it is "landlord" - I supply the wild bees with a place to live, and may even give them some food or medications at different times, but they are still "wild" so I have to work within their life pattern, not try to force them into my own. However, if I do get the hive manipulations right, and the weather cooperates, I can get as much as 10-15 GALLONS of honey out of a hive each year...

Gooserider