Douglas Alpenstock

I think the gibberish factor will make my skills increasingly more relevant in the next few years. I will be paid very well to rework the gibber to meet the needs of the company and the key audience, research and fact check the content, and rewrite it into something that humans can use.

Go ahead, AI. Make my day!

Anne Miller wrote:You are not the first person to ask this question:

https://permies.com/t/164081/Honeybee-biochar

Good find, Anne.

The thread describes exactly the same bee behaviour I'm observing. It must be the salt (sodium) they're after, since they have access to a water pond. They also don't go anywhere near the pails of dry, uncharged char.

Nice work, Bogdan!

Jill - Sure you can. If it's fully cooked char it'll make a tinkly sound and wash off your hands with water alone. More ideas here:
https://permies.com/t/73894/Making-biochar-wood-stove

Oh wow, Vitamin P is an actual thing! I had no idea, I was just joking around.

When I'm resurrecting old laptops I blow out the cooling paths with a leaf blower on low. Yeah I know, there's a risk of building up a dangerous static charge, but I haven't fried one yet. The crud that comes out is nasty.

Burra Maluca wrote:When did you last check your blood sugars?

It's possible that there is glucose in the pee and the bees are trying to collect it.

Hm! That's a curious idea. I thought maybe they were after minerals or something.

I have an annual physical exam that includes a full lab work-up. No concerns on that front.  

I suppose the alkaline nature of char might mean that any amount of glucose might be absorbed into the char itself and not be decomposed by bacteria. Since this is early season, with no flowers at all and nothing but poplar catkins for them to feed on, they might be interested in any source of "nectar" however meager.

Well, this is just crazy. I have a couple pails of fresh, dry biochar that were saturated with Vitamin P and left to molder a few weeks. I set them outside and suddenly there's a constant conveyor belt of honeybees coming and going. What on Earth are they after? I have it on good authority my Vitamin P doesn't smell like flowers.

Jay Angler wrote:Grated cheese mixed in counts as fat...

LA LA LA LA LA, I can't hear you!

Rental houses carry very long "snakes" for cleaning clogs in sewer lines. They are designed to rotate and get into or through the blockage. I wonder if that might be enough to snake a cable or stout rope through from end to end. Once you have that, you have plenty of options.

BTW the old timers would have used half a stick of dynamite. But that is frowned upon these days.