Craigslist score!

[Chicky2]

Hoping someone on here can appreciate what we scored last night!  For $200 (talked them down $25), we got a nice 2 frame honey extractor (worth over $300), an electric uncapping knife ($100 new and everything is in EXCELLENT condition), 2 pair bee gloves ($20/ea), 2 veils ($20/ea), frame gripper($7), hive tool ($7), smoker ($40), and a bee feeder ($10).  There were a couple of other little things tossed in the box I'm not familiar with yet (will make a great ? for our bee club!), a box of burlap for the smoker, and a couple dozen quart jars! 

We are so stinkin' excited!!!!!

We also got 3 more calls today for us to please come extract bees from people's barns/sheds/etc. 

We accidentally got into extracting swarms, lol.  We did one at our place, one at a nearby shed, and then people started calling after they heard we'll do it.  We started w/2 colonies of our own, and now have doubled that.  I think we're going to start selling complete colonies next year.

[Erinz]

That is AWESOME!! I have you beat though, ours was all given to us by a friend who just doesn't  have time any more. Crazy, no?!  SCORE on having people call you to get their swarms! When I was looking for bee stuff on CL so many ads were for trying to drum that up. Bees are FUN! We are newbies at it and have 2 hives going -- all volunteers that just moved right in.  That would be rad to be able to sell colonies, good luck with it and keep us posted! Sorry for all the excalamation points, but if we were talking in person I'd be jumpingn around and very animated about it haha!! Bees are very exciting.

:)

[Chicky2]

Ha!  I was just about to get off here and start supper and saw in my email that you posted.  I've been jumping up and down about it!  Between that score and winning a $200 gift card as a door prize at our feed store last weekend I'm ecstatic!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  We REALLY needed all of it, too!  Oh, and my dh managed to score 8 stackable wire rabbit hutches from a lady and he bartered his a/c services for them!  I really feel like our homestead is hoppin' this year!  Next year will rock because we'll have SO much done and can really start reaping the rewards of all our hard work!  FINALLY.

[Erinz]

Ack! I'm still on the lookout for rabbit cages!! NICE SCORE!! I only have one so far, I refuse to pay full price for them.  Fun to have someone starting up with the same stuff. (jump jump! haah!)

[Chicky2]

I've had rabbits for years, and we had them growing up (meat rabbits).  We got some great BIG wooden and wire ones from Freecycle a few years back. They open in the front and back, and we built the wall of the outside part of our rabbitry right around them.  :o)  We have an "inside rabbitry" and an "outside rabbitry".  One has a/c. 

I have made all our other hutches until these stackables.  We are going to build some more of them.  Wire hutches are super, super easy to build.  For me, I just had to have dh help w/the cutting, since my hands wore out so fast, lol.  Just use a 2x4 and a hammer to make edges.  I believe you can buy the trays at bunnyrabbit.com, but I haven't checked again yet (just think I saw them there in the past).  I can send you pics of our hutches if you need them to use as a guide.  We currently have hanging ones, and are about to convert them into stacked doe hutches, using the angle iron we have from some shelves (industrial shelving units that the wood finally rotted, but the iron is great!).  OMG, I wish you lived nearby!

[onetrumpeter]

happy for you! :)  LOVE finding great deals - I've not found any exciting deals relevant to what I'm dreaming of - homesteading - gotta have a place first - but it's fun to hear of your finds!  super cool about the bees - how'd you learn any of that?!?!  and what the difference between a swarm and a colony?

[Chicky2]

onetrumpeter, there is no difference between a swarm and a colony, except that most beekeepers I know refer to a colony as an established nest, rather than a place that a swarm recently just took over.

The beekeeping bug bit us when we had a swarm in a tree in the front yard in the Fall.  I knew instinctively that was the wrong time of the year (I knew NOTHING about the gentle art) and started trying to find someone to come get it and care for it.  I called the extension office and found an old man who'd been keeping bees for 50 yrs.  He came and gave us a lesson and some honey and we watched him take the bees.  A few years later when we felt we were ready, we called him up and bought our first 2 colonies from him.  He gave us hands-on mentoring and we learned so much!  We now attend monthly bee club meetings and have a whole bunch of very knowledgeable people we can call on anytime for advice, or to borrow something, or whatever.  We have ALOT to learn.  This is "the best of the things she gets me into", says my dh, lol.  We love it, and it's something we can do together now that our kids are older, AND we can make $ doing it! 

[QueenEsther]

OH awesome! That is so COOL! I am jealous. Have been wanting to start up beekeeping ever since I was a girl and watched my grandfather whisper to his bees, and got to eat the honey they made! I got some supers for free on CL a couple of years ago and have just been waiting on the right time. Now my grandfather is gone and I would do almost anything to have mentoring lessons from him on it now. You guys were blessed that you got to do that. Do you have to pay for the meetings? Like a membership fee or anything?

[Chicky2]

No, this bee club doesn't have dues.  I'd happily pay it though if it did!!  WELL worth it.  If you look around, I'll bet you can find a beek grandpa to adopt.  ;o)

[rayyy]

Thank our lucky stars for our modern day technology.craigslist,ebay,amizon,youtube.It's so easy to find what your are looking for these days.

[kitchensqueen]

I wish I could find deals like this one! 

[Chicky2]

Since this score, I also scored 70 (!) boxes--mostly medium supers and some shallows and some deeps.....FOR FREE.  I've been painting them and putting them on CL!  We have plenty now to do cutouts next Spring and sell the bees (or keep them-we lost a hive in this awful dearth.)