What did you do to / in your garage / shop today?

Just got done jarring up 20gal of honey. Citrus and wild flower. The Wife has already taken a case of qts to sell for her pocket money. She gets $20 a qt. My Daughter sells at the beach and those people are crazy and pay $40 a qt. I don’t see that money either.

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Why do you have urine samples on top of the honey? Someone needs to drink more water...
 
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That was the bottom of the bottler. Did not want to waste a jar on so little.
When I sold to the commercial packers I had to send in samples before they made an offer. Even a 10 cent or more price per pound adds up on a 40K load of honey. They mainly looked for color, water content and if you added corn syrup. They randomly tested the barrels when they arrived at their dock. Funny thing is that some of them add corn syrup themselves when they pack it.
My stuff is real, raw unfiltered and I can tell you where the bees made it.
I stopped commercial beekeeping in 2022 and just have a few hives to play with now. Went for producing tons of honey to hundreds of pounds.
 
That was the bottom of the bottler. Did not want to waste a jar on so little.
When I sold to the commercial packers I had to send in samples before they made an offer. Even a 10 cent or more price per pound adds up on a 40K load of honey. They mainly looked for color, water content and if you added corn syrup. They randomly tested the barrels when they arrived at their dock. Funny thing is that some of them add corn syrup themselves when they pack it.
My stuff is real, raw unfiltered and I can tell you where the bees made it.
I stopped commercial beekeeping in 2022 and just have a few hives to play with now. Went for producing tons of honey to hundreds of pounds.

Dang 40k load of honey........

How many hives do you have??
 
I was small time my Son and I only ran 1500. My Wife’s family run over 100K between 5 different operations. My checks from the packers were in $100K range. My BIL gets millions. That’s before expenses which anyone in farming knows adds up. Also it’s not uncommon to go 24 hrs durning the busy times and lots of travel around the country chasing honey flow and pollination contracts.
 
I was small time my Son and I only ran 1500. My Wife’s family run over 100K between 5 different operations. My checks from the packers were in $100K range. My BIL gets millions. That’s before expenses which anyone in farming knows adds up. Also it’s not uncommon to go 24 hrs durning the busy times and lots of travel around the country chasing honey flow and pollination contracts.

Good lord!!! Reason i was wondering a "friend" of mine, just recently passed away.

He had done pretty everything during his life, moonshine, running drugs, prison for running drugs, oh and broiler chickens.

When he got out of prison he got into commercial honey, I don't know how many or how much he sold, I do know he was getting free "dirty" sugar to feed his Bee's by the semi trailer load.

He told a bud of mine he made more money from honey than anything he had ever done.
 
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Yep we steal their honey and have to replace it with sugar or corn syrup. I’d send out 2 semis of honey and have to buy a semi tanker of corn syrup. Sugar not for human consumption is the best but very hard to source. The tipping point for me was the coat of transportation. It went from $2K to $8k or more to move them from Ca to ND one way.
 
Yep we steal their honey and have to replace it with sugar or corn syrup. I’d send out 2 semis of honey and have to buy a semi tanker of corn syrup. Sugar not for human consumption is the best but very hard to source. The tipping point for me was the coat of transportation. It went from $2K to $8k or more to move them from Ca to ND one way.

Dang, I do know the sugar he was getting was free. His grandkids were helping him, I hope they learned enough to keep it going.
 
Yep we steal their honey and have to replace it with sugar or corn syrup. I’d send out 2 semis of honey and have to buy a semi tanker of corn syrup. Sugar not for human consumption is the best but very hard to source. The tipping point for me was the coat of transportation. It went from $2K to $8k or more to move them from Ca to ND one way.

Years ago, I passed a tractor trailer that looked like it was loaded with bee hive boxes. The trailer was surrounded by netting, and there were a few bees flying along with the truck.

Is that how you moved a large honey operation, or was it a portable pollination operation?
 
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Years ago, I passed a tractor trailer that looked like it was loaded with bee hive boxes. The trailer was surrounded by netting, and there were a few bees flying along with the truck.

Is that how you moved a large honey operation, or was it a portable pollination operation?

408 2 box high hives on a semi trailer. Net the whole thing with a 2 piece net. We load and unload at night and tell the trucker not to stop for anything during the day. Scales just let them through. We tell the truckers to hit the road side rumble strips to wake up the bees before going into the scales. Cops won’t stop you because when you stop even with the netting a cloud of bees forms around them. I was going up the grape vine once with a load of bees. Trucks have to stay in the 2 right lanes. I was in the third passing slower trucks and a CHP pulled along side me and said through his loudspeaker “If you didn’t have those bees I’d pull your ass over. Now move over to the right.”. In Feb more than a million beehives are brought into Ca from all over the country for almond pollination. On a side note motorcycles hate following a load of bees.
Pollination pays the bills and honey is the profit. $150-250 per hive to pollinate the almonds during the bloom. Apples, cherries, blueberries, cranberries, watermelons, seed alfalfa, seed onions and other crops pay much less. 1 in 3 of the foods we eat require commercial pollination either for seed or the crop.
 
408 2 box high hives on a semi trailer. Net the whole thing with a 2 piece net. We load and unload at night and tell the trucker not to stop for anything during the day. Scales just let them through. We tell the truckers to hit the road side rumble strips to wake up the bees before going into the scales. Cops won’t stop you because when you stop even with the netting a cloud of bees forms around them. I was going up the grape vine once with a load of bees. Trucks have to stay in the 2 right lanes. I was in the third passing slower trucks and a CHP pulled along side me and said through his loudspeaker “If you didn’t have those bees I’d pull your ass over. Now move over to the right.”. In Feb more than a million beehives are brought into Ca from all over the country for almond pollination. On a side note motorcycles hate following a load of bees.
Pollination pays the bills and honey is the profit. $150-250 per hive to pollinate the almonds during the bloom. Apples, cherries, blueberries, cranberries, watermelons, seed alfalfa, seed onions and other crops pay much less. 1 in 3 of the foods we eat require commercial pollination either for seed or the crop.

Wow, it's a lot more complicated than I imagined. Motorcycle following bee trucks? Never had that experience, but I will say, NEVER follow a cattle truck. I thought it was raining, until I realized there wasn't a cloud in the sky :LOL:
 
Wow it actually gets that cold out there. Who woulda thought.

Yep it does.

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