I know this is sophomoric but how much do you get paid at work to poop? You may have heard of this before but if you haven’t, then take the time to do the math.

• Take the average time you spend in the bathroom each day (5-15 min)
• multiply that times the number of days you work each year (260 days)
• then divide that number by 60 (min) and multiply that times the amount you make an hour.
• (10 x 260) / 60 x $hr = What you get paid to poop

I won’t say how much I get paid to poop at my current job (just in case my boss actually stumbles onto my blog) however at my last offshore job I averaged $1,982 a year to poop (I don’t make any where near that kind of money now).

So this brings us to a philosophical question: Does this mean my poop was worth $1,982? OF COURSE NOT!

Yet, every time I post a blog about how I save money building my own equipment or how I went about selling my honey, some douche bag will post that their time is far too valuable to make such efforts. One super douche even posted how much he makes an hour.

There is an old saying, “I wish I could buy that man for what he is worth and sell him for what he thinks he is worth… then I could buy myself an island.”

The only way you can count the value of your time against the amount of money you make at your day job, is if you take time off from your day job to pursue your other goal. However, if the time you save not pursuing your goals is just spent watching TV, sleeping in, or surfing Facebook, then that time is of ZERO monetary value.

Disclaimer: I spend a shameful amount of time watching TV and I am in no way trying to shame anyone for enjoying their leisure time. All work and no play… as the saying goes.

My point is this: If you are like most people, your 40 hour work week pays your bills, maybe puts a little in your 401k, covers that family vacation (if you’re lucky), and covers your other basic needs. Those 40 hours sustain your life, it’s what you do the rest of the time that improves your life.

I don’t know who first said it but I love the quote: “Don’t work 8 hours for a company then go home and not work on your own goals. You‘re not tired, you‘re uninspired.“

DIY SHB Vacuum

I am still fighting small hive beetles at my house – though I am thankful to say that when visited Dr. D’s place yesterday, all of my hives out there seemed to be doing wonderful. Though, I didn’t have time to do a thorough inspection since it started to rain (and I mean pour).

I’ve concluded that dealing with the weatherman is much like having a crack-whore living in your house. You can’t count on either of them, their stories constantly change, and just when you think you can believe them, they will ruin your plans every time.

Anyway, If you remember from my other blogs, I had two beetle infested hives that I was able to save and I brought them both to my house. They still are fighting beetles but the hives are strong and keeping the upper hand.

However, the two cutouts I brought home last week were weak and queenless and so the beetles have moved into those hives. One of them couldn’t be saved but the other is still putting up a fight.

Well that was how I came up with the beetle vacuum. I went to Auto-zone and bought a clear fuel hose and a pack of connectors (see picture). I attached this to a water bottle and put some screen over the suction nozzle. The hose adapter on the fuel line has two ports. By hooking the hose to one of them, I could control the suction on/off by just placing my thumb over the second port. I also used a hard straw from my stainless steel tumbler as a hard intake nozzle.

The vacuum works like a charm and only cost about $9. It sucked up the beetles, even from the hard to reach corners and grooves inside the hive. Of course this wouldn’t be very practical out at DR. D’s since I don’t have a source of power to plug it into. But at home, it worked great.

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Aside from working 40+ hours last week, going to the Framer’s Market on Saturday, inspecting my hives (ever how briefly), I also finished cutting and assembling 60 wooden frames yesterday and placed a wax coated Popsicle stick as a starter strip across the top. This went really fast and I am actually looking forward to building 2,000 frames this winter with my new router (though I can hear the self-important douche bags posting how they would just buy them).

Lastly, you can see in the first two pictures in the gallery, that I had a lot of bees light on the fence. I inspected this cluster several times and there was no queen, just the same they stayed on the fence from Monday through Friday. On Friday, I blew them off and then rinsed the fence down to remove any pheromones that were there.

Have any of you ever seen anything like that? I had always thought that homeless bees would just absorb into a nearby hive – it appears I was wrong.