After WWII a great deal of war surplus material was sold for ridiculously low prices. My father bought many five gallon cans of paint, mostly army drab, to paint the chicken houses. The hired hands painted the chicken houses every few year using a gasoline powered sprayer.
The paint cans came in sturdy oak boxes. Some boxes were one-can boxes and the others were two-can boxes. The one-can boxes were just the right size and shape for bee hives.
In addition to rats under the chicken houses there were, on occasion, bees. I fashioned a couple of bee hives out of paint boxes. The hives were on 2x2 legs. I placed the legs in tin cans filled with water to keep the ants from invading the hives and destroying them. I then captured two swarms of bees and introduced them to the new hives. I extracted honey for a couple of years before I grew tired of the effort.
I must have been stung at least a few times, but I do not recall having been stung.
In retrospect it seems that I was something like Henry Ford. He used the wood from the crates in which his transmissions arrived for floorboards in his automobiles.
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