Beekeepers and Hoarding
Jessica Louque
For those of you who listened to our podcast with Kim Flottum and Jeff Ott, we got quite a bit of correspondence about the surplus of bee equipment we have stored. We have three barns of leftover bee supplies from years past. We had people from all over the place offer to come help us lighten the load. Normally, we are pretty content in our hoarding because you never know when you’ll need equipment. Once, we had to pull 200 top feeders out of storage and bleach them down and use them when an order didn’t arrive on time and we had packages come in. Sometimes though, things change . . . or we just need the space.
My son Henry wanted to learn how to drive a stick shift so he bought an older Miata and parked it in our ag barn, but it was really tight so he ended up moving it to my mom’s barn. It’s close quarters even there because we have so much stuff. Then, I found Lucy, who is now my 1967 F100 with a replacement 351W engine and is mint and cream. She cannot fit in any barn and has to park under a carport. It’s time to clean out the barns.
Our Farmfest was forever changed with the pandemic, but I think for the better in the long term. The sunflower trail actually worked out well for us and made things a lot easier. This year, we planted even more sunflowers – I hope. Henry was in charge of the seed throwing while his girlfriend Angel drove because he thought she was throwing too much. I’m not happy with what came up so I’m throwing more out. Either way, we have more land that could have sunflowers instead of leaving it in hay. Since we will have more people out and about, it seems like a good time to try to sell equipment and make some space. We have some boxes with frames in them that have never been used, just stacked and painted. Lids, feeders, bottom boards – you name it. Some of it is stacked way over my head on pallets. Some was used just to install failing packages and was in the field for maybe a month. Either way, it’s more than we will ever use.
Lucy.
For the sunflower trail, we set up at our old stable that my mom renovated and sold flower bouquets and honey, with trips to the sunflowers to take your own pics with the request of a donation to the fire department. This year, I think the sunflowers will be easier for people because they were a little difficult for some of the older visitors to see due to driving through the field and this year, they are closer to the highway. We would also be able to put all the bee equipment out like we did with the pumpkins last year and have it out to go through. Most likely, everything will have a set price and be organized by type of equipment.
My Lucy (the F100) is in really good shape but there are a lot of things that I want to change, because I am female and I like shiny things. It just goes that way sometimes. I got her because she was revamped enough to be safe to drive, but old enough that I don’t need a computer engineering degree to work on her and there were plenty of parts to play with. I want to open the hood and have astronauts have to shade their eyes from the shine. It’s going to take a lot of space to do this kind of work. Hopefully I can at least replace the alternator and radiator before Farmfest and have her parked in the sunflowers for pictures. Maybe even set up an empty hive or two in the field for a backdrop.
If anybody is in the area, Farmfest will be September 18, 2021. Our Communities of Northwest Stokes will have information if you search it. My plan is to clear out most of our barns of equipment and organize the ag barn so there is more usable space and it can be more useful to our needs. We have several hundred painted lids, bottom boards, robbing screens, queen excluders, feeders, and deep boxes with and without frames, plus some pollen traps that have either never been used at all or were only used for failed packages. I have a friend named Beamon who has bought some of our equipment and he filled an entire trailer and it honestly didn’t leave a dent. I’m thinking we will probably charge a flat rate of $10 (maybe $30 for pollen traps) for every piece of equipment and the frames are just in it because I’m not guaranteeing condition. It will all be dirty because it’s been sitting around. We may find more stuff to bring out depending on how much has been forgotten totally.
In addition to this, I will probably be selling some of my plant collection. It’s a lot of plants and I really like to grow smaller plants large and then propagate or split the larger plants. I plan to sell a lot of my bigger plants, like my massive banana tree that has vanilla bean bananas, or whatever is just not my absolute favorite so I don’t have to figure out how to overwinter them. I may even do some splits on my ultra-rare plants, although most of those are alocasias or cacti and succulents. I may have some philodendron pink princess cuttings, and some alocasia bagindas. It depends on what it looks like when Farmfest rolls around, but I’ll have at least thirty to fifty plants for sale.
Beamon with a full trailer.
Since I have so many plants on my plantstagram (Instagram account for my plants) I’ve been able to work a deal with HardyGro fertilizer, which is an organic fertilizer for plants. I’ll do a write-up on them later when it’s only about their stuff, but they’ve given me a 10% off code if you want to order fertilizer off their website, which is HONEYBEE10. I’m going to see if they will let me set up some of their smaller bottles to sell with the plants at Farmfest for a nice display with the plants. If you want to see what plants I might have for sale, or request something, you can find my plantstagram at PlantsThatLiveHere on Instagram. Surprisingly enough, it’s literally only plant posts or plant oriented. People who follow plant accounts do not appreciate honey bee posts. I was pretty surprised but I keep that to my personal page now.
The current plan is to set up at our stable like last year for parking and purchases. People can drive around to go to the sunflowers, and make a donation to the fire department in payment for visiting sunflowers and taking their own pictures in them. Hopefully I can park Lucy somewhere that people can take pics with her but where I can keep an eye on her (some people suck, which is unfortunate). We’ll try to have photo ops set up for people. Then, we’ll have the bee equipment organized by type so it’s easier to go through, with price listed on a poster at the front. Plants will be on a table or hangers, along with sunflower bouquets and vases. I think we’ll be able to sell pumpkins again this year too if we can keep the weather accommodating.
I’ll ask Bee Culture’s social media people to post the Farmfest map once it’s official so anybody that’s interested might be able to come out and look around. It won’t be just us on the sunflower trail, and there might be something else people are interested in. The apple farm that I wrote about last year with Brittney Kordick is on the list, and there’s always good food at the stops. We should also have a tractor show for people to enjoy, and there’s still time for more vendors to add themselves to the map. The origination point will be the Francisco Volunteer Fire Department at the community building. This is where you can pick up maps and buy food. Everyone is still working out the details, but if you find the Our Communities of Northwest Stokes on Facebook, they will most likely post updates. Our bee equipment will be on a first-come, first-served basis so once we sell out, it’s done. We won’t have a limit on how much you buy, so if you come in and take it all, by all means it’s yours! There won’t be a discount for mass purchasing though since it’s already pretty cheap and barely used. I guess some people might see the rainbow paint as a downside, but painted always holds up better than unpainted no matter the color choice.
I’m hoping to put some of this money towards working on Lucy and getting her “restored” to full shine. Anything I can get in polished chrome or aluminum is going under that hood. I want to replace the suspension in the back and I need to repair some spots in the floor from rust. Whitewalls would have been good if Lucy was teal and white, but the color is an off-white cream, so I think I’ll go solid black instead. Tires and steel wheel baby moons are going to be easily $1,500, plus another $1,000 easily to replace the exhaust and intake manifolds. The suspension alone will probably be around $3,000 to replace. I need to sell a lot of bee equipment I think!
Jessica and her husband, Bobby stay busy with bees and beekeeping, kids, trucks, animals and more at their home in North Carolina.
