So I have been looking for a vehicle to convert to CNG to pull a small trailer to get 4x8 materials and scrap from junkyards to build this **** and **** like this for youth STEM type programs to actually teach useful skills instead of just making arcade cabinets out of RPis. One of my medium term projects is finding an agricultural operation of sufficient size to build an anaerobic digester and scrubbing system that can run this vehicle for these hardware store trips. Rest of the time it will mostly be a drive-in theater in a garage unless I get a steady supply of biogas.

Well, coincidence of all coincidences, the man that I sold my old car to years ago has passed away, and his family is now selling his car.

Here is the ad.

I really want my old car back so I can make this monstrous thing run on microbe farts and have sex with my secretary in my garage in wood trimmed luxury. I haven't heard back from them yet. Please vibrate for me.

Spook you sure do have lots of ~b~i~g~ ~p~l~a~n~s~

Don't you know Total Conversions never get finished?

good luck!

It's true, my ultimate plan is called Humanity Passes the Great Filter TC but we all know it will get bogged down by real life getting distracting. You know, superstorms, clouds of poison gas from the sea, planes and boats losing lift and buoyancy because of temperature and density changes etc. But since how you get there is the worthier part, I don't mind if I am murdered by climate refugees in the prelude to complete collapse. However that will happen after fighting them from my uparmored biogas ElDorado with beehives built onto the roof and a lathe in the trunk.

thanks!

V-I-B-E-S

I'm sure you have to air it out a bit after 35 years of road head.

But why did you sell it in the first place?

Most apiarists I know can barely work a flip phone, that bee buzzer box looks complicated

I was broke. I used the proceeds to buy some Ether. Now I'm rich.

Yeah Steven the monitor isn't going to go on all of them, maybe every fifth hive that I can get sited at a professors house or something.

Most beekeepers have 408 hives at each of their locations. Locations are at least 1.5 miles apart, and they have a handful of locations in any local area. They typically have areas all over the state or country that they ship their bees to depending on the season (flowers, weather etc.). One box for every 100 hives, or even one per location would probably cut it. A single beekeeper with five or six full locations is running at about max for a solo guy.

Interesting. I honestly don't know much about making a beekeeping operation profitable, I am hoping to do this in the areas surrounding campus and have students maintain them so that I can tout that members of my club are participating in an open source research program to save bees, rather than producing lots of honey or actually saving the bees (lmao) but I probably need to do a lot more due diligence on what exactly goes on in a conventional operation too.

Where is your campus? It's likely there is a bee club nearby. Members are both professional and amateur, and you're certain to find a lot of help.

Beekeeping is actually pretty fun, I enjoy it quite a bit.

Northern Utah, same town as http://coxhoney.com/ who I assume have lots of local contacts, but I have only talked to them about their own setup so far. How long have you been doing it?

This is my third season. I'm not really a "professional," but I work with a friend who is a commercial keeper. He's been at it for 30 years. I started out just hanging around on days off when he needed a hand because I thought it was interesting, but he will hire me when he's busy, which happens to coincide with the slow season in my business.

The time to get the best data is probably during pollination. Farmers will "rent" the bees for pollination of crops (we do almonds in CA central valleys). That's when most of the bee deaths occur. We suspect it's due to the various chemicals the farmers spray, though the farmers deny they spray anything while the bees are in the groves. We'll have a 25% failure rate. This is bad for everyone, because we have to rebuild those lost hives, which costs money, so we charge the farmers more, which costs them money, etc. until almonds cost $4/lb.

Cox probably doesn't even have any bees right now, it's too cold. Their bees are probably in FL, AZ, TX, or CA, but should be coming back in the spring. I think that constant moving also leads to bee death; Cox in UT sends his bees to a keeper FL for the winter. The FL guy then rents the bees to an orange farmer, who kills 1/3 of the bees with chemicals. The FL guy keeps the pollen money, but uses some of it to either re-build the hives, or he just splits a strong hive into two weak hives to get the number back up. This leads to many weak hives. Then the FL guy ships them to CA, and he rents them to almond farmers and does the same thing. Eventually, there are no strong hives left, just a bunch of half-dead hives.

Ugh that makes me want to get blackout drunk

That's a cool opportunity to get hybrid hobby/professional experience though, I'm jealous.

You can overwinter hives somehow if you aren't focused on keeping profits up year round though, right?

Yes, but it's a giant PITA. You have to insulate them or move them inside, feed them, check on them all the time. It costs less to just truck them to Texas where they can actually make money for you. There are some beekeepers who mostly just keep other peoples bees. They're usually in temperate climates, and they will tend the bees, use them for pollination or honey, and work out some sort of profit share with the bee owner.

Well it certainly doesn't cost less if you were to incorporate all of the externalities (new carbon in the carbon cycle etc.) of shipping things, which will also kill the bees, so I will definitely need to look into developing off grid apiaries with some sort of earth bermed greenhouse to move the bees into during the winter.

Really? I was going to make a joke about you buying ETH with that money but you did just that, you depraved disgusting dog!

That would certainly be a worthwhile undertaking. Humanity has been keeping bees since antiquity; someone in times past probably figured out a way to do that we've forgotten.

Also, when you're ready to start making plans, check out the Bee Informed people. They're on top of their game and put out some good info.

Thanks, I'll check them out. And yeah, a lot of the appropriate technology stuff I am doing is just readopting techniques appropriately scaled to human communities that were abandoned in favor of 'progress'.

i did not read the apiary discussion but vibes for u nonetheless my friend

Mission accomplished friends, this has been great teamwork. If any of you are ever in Northern Utah look me up and I will give you a ride to Lowe's.

Also ECHOMAN, this is a big part of my effort to run a savage ****ing burn on the system using it's own collapse. I put my original profit into my eyes and now I HAVE THE CAR I SOLD TO GET THE EYES, TAKE MY PROFIT NOW YOU BANKER ****S

it was u who pushed the vibes into climax

can we change his title to hitachi wand?

Arduino controlled vibes

i vote in favor of this measure

I think that basically assures it will not be done