(Meaning "hacking" more in the sense of homebrew solutions rather than in the breaking-into-computers sense)
It was definitely Show 'n tell night at the La Crosse Area Beekeeper's meeting. For instance, one person brought out two different mechanisms for collecting pollen for human consumption (which, by the way, is something you do judiciously because that starves the bees of protein). And then there was the beat-up "super" (i.e. the upper stories of the hive in which the bees stash the honey that their humans later harvest) that was recycled into a mechanism for absorbing the condensation which can kill a winterized hive during particularly cold snaps.
But tonight's top hacker was, far and away, the most resourceful scrounger. He used to work in a cheese plant. and for reasons of sanitation and safety, the food industry does not reuse a lot of equipment. Thus perfectly good thermometers (important for making sure that honey is not heated past the surprisingly low temperature that devastates its floral characteristics) were rescued from the trash. Ditto food-grade plastic buckets (previously home to food coloring) which made straining, storing and gently uncrystalizing (with the mere heat of a light bulb) honey so much less bulky.
And, although purchased second-hand rather than scavenged, the most interesting specimen (to me) was the homemade top-feeder. Essentially, that was a box in which a chimney had been constructed to allow the bees to come up from inside the hive (on which the feeder is placed). The feeder what can only be described as a wooden raft that fits inside the feeder (with a hole cut for the chimney) and floats on top of the sugar water that bulks up the bees' stores for the winter or tides them over until the maples and other early-blooming plants & trees provide the first nectar of the year. The raft helps to keep them from drowning, something to which they are prone even when they're not groggy from the cold.
Listening to other beekeepers talk about their inventions/acquisitions is quite different from flipping through catalogs and/or browsing the vendor tables at the state convention, namely because the gadgets (and the ideas behind them) have already been through one round of vetting by survival of the fittest. Understand that in beekeeping--as with most things--there is no such thing as One True Way, so you have to factor in style.
I can't begin to tell you how much fun it is to see other people's brainchildren, even when you know that it probably won't work with your setup and/or philosophy. Beekeeping certainly has no monopoly on that sort of thing, but it's a livelihood under siege from many different quarters. Which--I like to believe--tends to bring out the ingenuity of those who don't abandon the field to colony collapse disorder or a distinctly unlevel global playing field.
