Venting! "Cost Effectiveness"

[aggienaut]

Some quick venting about work. The other day I spent a nine hour day going through a trailer and a half of hives, pulling out frames of honey and checking hives that looked either unusually weak or strong (and thus in danger of swarming). When a frame is full of honey the bees cap over the cells. Back home I'd generally not pull off a "super" (box) unless it was 90% capped. Here it seems most beekeepers will just pull out practically anything that has any honey in it at all when they're going through the hives.

So I went through about 50 supers, pulled out the frames that were about 75% capped, which came out to about 7.5 boxes of capped honey.

The next morning Trevor (my boss) calls me up and starts saying, in a very patronizing tone "you keep saying things about cost effectiveness and efficiency, but you had all these 60% full frames of honey in your hand and put them back in the hive, where's the efficiency in that Kris?"

But the fact is, I would have gone through all the hives no matter what, to inspect them, but it takes about a minute and 12 seconds per frame to put it through the extracting process, whether its 90% full or 60% full. The last extracting run I did, with only 90% frames I'd pulled, I got 17.1 liters of honey per box. The first run we did, when I was working with "Old Greg" (remember him?), we got 8 liters per box. EIGHT. And that was something like 400 frames -- 40+ boxs -- a 13+ hour day of extracting.

In conclusion, it is completely a false economy to get excited about pulling more 60% full boxes instead of 90% boxes -- if left in the hive the bees will continue to fill them and then I'll waste a whole lot less of my time in the sauna extracting shed. d:


Also, and I suppose this is turning into a rant no one will read because its fully of technical details, but honey and frames do a LOT better in hives -- sitting in the warehouse without bees taking care of them they get all chewed up by wax moths and beetles. Also Trevor alleged I wasn't even turning him a profit after he pays my wage, but by my calculations the honey pulled should pay more than three days of my wage, and in those three days I'd probably continue to pull as much more .... Today I pulled all the 60%+ frames I came across, which totalled sometihng like 12 boxes. He should be excited about that, though in fact its the same amount of honey but he'll be paying me for more extracting time, and during that extracting time I won't be pulling honey........


Hopefully he's just temporarily pissy on account of his house and farm getting flooded. That and I think the beekeeping is the only farming operation that is able to function at the moment so he's apt to give it too much attention. d:

Comments

[magenta-girl.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry about your bee woes. Did your pay issues ever get worked out?
That is a gorgeous photo!!!!!

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Yeah I talked to his wife and she said that she'd been bringing it down to 23% taken out for taxes, which is what's currently missing, so hopefully my future paychecks will be 77% of what I earned instead of 50. d:

There's something weird like if I'm registered with the tax office as "an Australian resident for tax purposes" it would only be 13% but if I'm not a resident I guess its 23... but then I get a certain amount refunded at the end of the fiscal year or something? Obviously I need to investigate all this.

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

Kind of an interesting problem, actually. If I understand what you're saying, the question is: Is the time spent putting back insufficiently full frames offset by time saved extracting only nearly full frames?

If that's right, then if you could tell me (a) how long it takes to take out a frame, look at it and put it back, and (b) how long it takes to take out a frame, decide it's full enough, put it aside, and replace the frame with a new one (I'm guessing here), then maybe there's some actual numbers to find!

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

I decided to get this exact number myself yesterday! I went through 31 boxes in 279 minutes, which, remarkably, seems to be exactly a minute a frame.

That number obviously includes both the time it takes just to quickly glance at 9 frames and quickly decide I can just put the lid on, and the 64 frames I pulled out, shook the bees off, placed in the truck, and replaced.

Its a bit hard to come up with a workable average time, because some boxes I just need to look in the top and I know there's nothing more I need to do with it. I think I can give a regular double box a thorough inspection in about 12 minutes though, which is about a min and 20 seconds per honey frame, but actually pulling honey frames from that same hive would add to the time. If I want accurate numbers I'm going to have to go wild with a stopwatch I think /:

[beki.livejournal.com]

I'm curious, whatever happened to Mr Crankypants? I don't recall seeing a post. I know I'm missing stuff though, so I may have totally missed something important.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Oh I killed him and dumped his body.

Jk, he never showed his face again after the Christmas Holidays! I reckon he wasn't enjoying working with me and told himself he'd just work through the end of the year. That's a nice solid date so he doesn't feel like he's quitting / "letting me win." Am soooo glad he's not around though, I'd never get anything done!

[gaeln.livejournal.com]

You haven't lost your job it would seem so, that's good, right? I did read everything and basically understood it. You're reasoning will eventually win him over, I hope.