re: #6 Backwoods_Sleuth

BEES!!!

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I used to work for a sizeable apiary in Northern California. We moved 2000 colonies into almond orchards every February to pollinate. Then we’d move those colonies to yards (about 120 colonies would fit on the back of a flatbed two-ton truck) throughout northern California and southern Oregon. Then we’d move them all to Montana in the summer for alfalfa and sweet clover honey harvest.

We could get 10-15lbs of honey production per colony per day when the conditions were right. Filled close to 700 55 gallon barrels with honey (600lbs of honey per barrel).

That wasn’t the fun part of the job. Fun part was grafting queens in the fall and winter and shipping them to beekeepers in northern states and Canada - about 3,000 queens a year at $6 a pop (1990s prices).