It's possible for even a beginner backyard beekeeper to make money from beekeeping. It might be a few years until you can quit your day job, but, hey, if you can make enough money to buy a nice extractor, why not?
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There are a lot of ways you can generate income as a beekeeperand I've tried quite a few of them. In this article you'll learn what you can realistically expect with just a few hives, what worked for me and what didn't.
The easiest way to make some cash is to sell your honey to friends, family and co-workers. A simple and social media post is often times enough. If your work is ok with it, have some for sale in the break room or see if your church will let you sell some in their cafeteria or office. If you're like me and feel weird about asking people you know if they want to buy your products, then sell at a market. I prefer to pay a little extra and sell at a festival or holiday fair over the weekly markets. People buy a lot more during the holiday season and honey is one of those gifts that's nice for someone when you don't know what to get them. Everyone likes food, right? If you do sell your products during the holiday season, make sure you have a nice gift basket option. It doesn't have to literally be in a basket, but offer some kind of three pack of your different honey variations/confections or a nicely packaged little basket with some of your products. One apiary used to have different names for their baskets. There was the realxation basket and it had a tin of tea, a couple jars of honey, a lavender scented beeswax candle and a salve.
If you have more than a few cases of honey, contact local food stores. You make less per jar selling to stores, but wholesale accounts are the number one revenue source for my bee farm and the honey farm I used to work for. I would start with the food co-ops and small health food stores. Most food stores markup a product about 30%, so account for that when pricing your honey. Check out my video on how to price your honey.
A frame of our honeycomb at the Halekulani Resort breakfast buffet
If you have a lot of honey, instead of selling by the jar, you can sell it by the bucket to restaurants, bakeries and hotels. You make even less per ounce, but you save SO MUCH time not having to fill and label every little jar. For more about selling wholesale, check out my how to sell honey wholesale video.
Cottage Food Laws allow you to sell honey and other low-risk foods without needing a certified kitchen. Learn more about cottage food laws in our FREE business of beekeeping class. Click here to learn more.
Once you have some wax rendered (what we call when you melt and clean the honeycomb so that it is a solid block of wax free of dirt and bee parts), you can make beeswax wraps, candles, soap and body products.
If you want the greatest payoff, then I recommend making beeswax candles. They have a high profit margin because you don't have to buy much. All you need is string and a candle mold. I've made a lot of beeswax candles for my own busienss and for another apiary I worked for and I wil say that it was a waste of money making a bunch of different candle molds. I found that the cutesy candle molds aren't big sellers. It's a much better investment to buy a set of plain, pillar molds and add different scents and colors to the candles instead of buying a bunch of different candle mold designs shaped like skeps, flowers and shells.
People love scented candles! At first, I didn't add scents to my candles because it's expensive and the scent dissipates over time, but the first time someone does when they see a candle is smell it. Buy some popular scents in bulk to save money and add a scent to your candles!
You can also use your honey jars for candle making. Check out my video on how to make beeswax candles in containers for some tips. Putting a candle in a container is a great option if you don't have a lot of wax because you usually add 30% coconut oil to the beeswax so that it doesn't shrink in the jar. The jar also makes the candle look bigger and will hold the scent longer than a free-standing candle.
Body products don't have as high of a profit margin because it's mostly oils and butters and very little beeswax, but if you don't have a lot of wax, body products and beeswax wraps are the product for you. Chap stick (or lip balm) is a really big seller, but you can also make soap, salves, body butters, and lotions with beeswax. Wellness Mama has a lot of great beeswax lotion recipes. Make sure the wax you use in cosmetics and for food-related products was not in the hive when you treated for mites!
Beeswax wraps are another popular beeswax product. They are a more eco-friendly alternative to using plastic wrap and have a high price point.
You can also sell blocks of pure beeswax to people who make candles and body products. I've never had much luck selling pure beeswax. I can't compete with the prices on amazon, but if you see a demand for it, give it a shot!
I want to address this importor syndrome people sometimes have when it comes to beekeeping. They feel like they can't buy beeswax or honey from someone and sell it because it's not from their bees. There's nothing wrong with buying honey and beeswax from other apiaries! Don't lie to people and say it's all from your farm, but you don't have to limit yourself to selling just what you harvested that year. Many farms buy in bulk from other farms and sell it under their label. To keep your costs as low as possible, instead of buying online, contact loal apiaries first. Many of them are happy to sell their beeswax in bulk for pretty cheap.
Beekeepers can sell a nuc, a package of bees or queen bees. Most people with a small bee farm sell nuc's. They're much easier to put together. All you need is a nuc box, which you can purchase online. I like to use the waxed nuc boxes. They're about $10 a piece and I don't have to coordinate with people to drop it back off at the farm.
When selling bees, you want to make sure you have good genetics. Don't rush to sell nucs or word will spread fast that your bees are poor quality and you won't be selling much.
When selling nucs, I've found that there are three ways to find customers - post an ad on craigslist, ask the local bee assoc. to post your contact info on their website or hold a beekeeping class. When you offer a bee class, after the class is over, some students will be ready to buy bees and they'll be looking to you for their source. Even a short, $5 class at your local rec center is often enough to generate customers.
Beekeeping classes are a great way to generate income in the Spring and Summer.
If you don't have the experience to offer an in-depth class, you could also offer bee/farm tours for the general public. The bee farm I used to work for offered beekeeping tours to the general public. These are great because it's not just for beekeepers, but anyone who wants to learn about bees, so there's a greater audience to sell to, they're shorter, and you don't have to give people a suit and veil.
Me giving a beekeeping tour at Big Island Bees
If you're not interested in having people stop by your bee yard, but like educating people about bees, you could also write an ebook and self publish it or start a beekeeping podcast and accept donations from your listeners or get advertising.
Here at our bee farm we give beekeeping classes (obviously!) and also have a podcast. However, I chose to not take on advertising or accept donations from listeners. We simply use it as a way to teach people about bees and spread the word about our classes.
Before you start selling or reselling honey, check with your county's laws to see what's required of you, what needs to be on the label and if there's any restrictions on reselling honey another farm's farm or selling your honey out of state.
Many commercial beekeeping operations rely heavily on making an income from pollination services. Whether or not you will be able to find a farm interested in this service depends on where you live. Here in Kona, there's a lot of queen breeders and most farmers get pollination for free, but in most of the U.S., farmers will pay quite a bit for pollination. This service is great for beekeepers that have at least 50 hives. I wouldn't recommend offering pollination services if you're a small bee farm because if a farm sprays and kills a yard of your bees, it could destroy your apiary. Pollination services also requires a large truck to transport and, ideally, a forklift to move the hives.
Once you are already selling some of your honey and wax products, a great way to increase your final sale is to make what I call "bee swag". This may be a sticker, t-shirt or other product not made by the bees but is related to bees or honey. At our farm, we sell t-shirts, onesies and magnets with our logo on it. These items are good sellers, especially during the holiday season when people are looking for fun and unique gifts for beekeepers.
At our farm, we get paid by a hotel to keep bees for them. They keep the honey, we keep the bees. It's a great, steady income. The client gets to advertise that they're helping the bees and they can share a jar of honey with their logo on it with their guests. In addition to hotels, resorts, restaurants, B Corps, botanical gardens and retreat centers are all great places to contact about this service.
Some businesses might not need the honey, but would love to say that they have bees on the property. to get that first client, offer to keep the bees for free on their property in exchange for them paying for the bees and equipment and you give them a case of honey each year. There are a variety of ways you can work out compensation so that it makes sense for the client and for you. If you're just getting started, this can be a great way for you to not have to spend so much getting started.
One piece of advice! Don't undermine how much work beekeeping is. It only takes 20 minutes to inspect a hive, but sometimes there are problems and, of course, honey harvesting is usually an all day project. Make sure you are compensated for your hard work! With m first client, I forgot to include the time it took to harvest the honey. The client also expected me to label all the jars! Overestimate how many hours a month you spend beekeeping, because I can guarantee there will be tasks you forgot about that will come up later.
Personally, I hate doing cut outs (when you remove a wild hive from their location). It almost always ends up taking all day, I find it difficult to do without someone helping me, you often have to cause damage to someone's house to get to the bees and sometimes requires a tall ladder. It's just too much. That being said, some people love it and I'm grateful that these people exist so I don't have to do it!
How much you charge for your removals is up to you. It can vary quite a bit depending on where you live, how big and established the hive is and where it's located. One thing I've found when doing removals is that people lie! Seriously. They say "no, it's not too high up." I get there and I need a 8' ladder. They say the bees just got there and I see a huge hive that's been there all summer(granted they just maybe didn't notice them until recently). Also, sometimes people think it's honey bees, but it's wasps. I used to ask them to text me a video from as close as they could comfortably get so I didn't waste my time driving there.
Having a bee vacuum and at least one person to help you out is incredibly helpful. If your bee club offers bee removal services see if you can get on the list to help out.
I have never sold pollen, because I live in a humid climate where the pollen gets moldy in the traps really fast, but it is another product you can harvest from the hive. Just remember that there may be different criteria for selling this product in your county. For example, you may need a certified kitchen. Also, pollen has a shelf life, so make sure you do your research and harvest it properly before you sell it.
I found that 20 was a good number for me in order to quit my job. I was able to easily manage 20 hives on my own. I would take 1 day to inspect them all and they weren't all in one spot or even close to my home.
One person should be able to manage up to 50 hives on their own, in my opinion, especially if they do not have another job other than beekeeping. If you can't manage 50 hives, you should really look at your inspection practices and the other ways you're spending your time. If you're spending all day at a farmer's market, you better be making at least $800 on average to make it worth that day. Otherwise, look for wholesale accounts or start selling online and drop the market.
I wouldn't start offering beekeeping classes or selling nuc's until you have at least 20 hives.
So you’re ready to start your first hive! Congratulations! There’s a world of wonder awaiting you! And also a decent amount of planning. Starting a hive isn’t the work of a weekend, and it can’t be started just any time of the year. But don’t be daunted! As long as you have a sense of what to do when, the work is really pretty minimal.
The time to install your hive is spring. If you’re brave enough to try to catch a wild swarm, spring is when you’re most likely to find them – it’s when the population growth is booming and things get cramped enough in existent hives for swarms to break off. Odds are you’re ordering a package colony from a company, though, and spring is when they do their business.
No matter when you order, your package colony will most likely be delivered in April. That’s the time established colonies start getting to work, and the perfect time to start. It should be warm enough for the bees to be active, and nectar and pollen flow should be at its highest. Conditions are perfect for rapid growth.
That being said, you shouldn’t wait until April to order. Package colonies are in high demand – even established beekeepers who’ve lost their bees to winter will be after them – and you don’t want to invest in a lot of equipment only to find there’s not a bee to be bought in your area! As early as January, start shopping around. Compare your options and pre-order if you can.
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Although your bees won’t be coming until the spring, there’s no reason to wait until then to start planning. In fact, you shouldn’t wait. Setting up a hive involves quite a bit of waiting and assembling and just plain figuring things out. And bees are living things: As soon as they arrive, they need a place to live. You wouldn’t wait until you’ve brought your baby home from the hospital to start thinking about buying a crib.
The best time to start planning and amassing equipment is the fall. It’s still nice enough that you can explore outside for the perfect location, and you have plenty of time to read up and track down the right equipment. The last thing you want is to rush to the beekeeping supply store at the last minute only to find they’re sold out of what you’re looking for.
Another thing you’ll want to do ahead of time is to research the government regulations on beekeeping where you live. In the United States the federal government has no beekeeping regulations (apart from some restrictions on importing honey bees from abroad). Instead, the rules are left to the state governments, which unfortunately means some research on the part of the beekeeper.
This directory of US State Departments of Agriculture is a good place to start. For example, if I want to know if I need to register in the state of Washington, I’ll follow that state’s link to the Washington State Department of Agriculture site. Rather than sifting through, trying to decide if bees fall under insects or animals, I’ll type “apiary” into the search bar at the top. (Apiary is a scientific term and more likely to bring up what you’re looking for than “beekeeping”). Sure enough, this search brings up the result Apiary Registration, which has instructions, cost, timeline, and a link to the form.
If you find your state’s website confusing (and they sometimes are) call the office instead and speak to a real person who ought to know the rules. Alternatively, call or visit your local university extension office – they’ll know what needs to be done. They’ll also know if you’ll need to have your hive inspected for disease once it’s up and running.
Similarly, you’ll need to check with your local government to make sure beekeeping is allowed. It’s important to remember that bees can be dangerous and even deadly for some people, and cities and towns are well within their rights to forbid the keeping of bees within their borders. If this is the case for you, though, don’t despair! Do you have friends or family with land outside the city limits? What about farmers? A dedicated pollinating team is a huge incentive for a farmer to let you keep a hive or two on their farm. And the promise of a jar or two of honey will only sweeten the deal. Ask around – you may be pleasantly surprised.
Even if beekeeping is allowed where you live, it’s common courtesy to tell your neighbors about it, especially if you live in close quarters. Tell them that bees don’t sting unless threatened, and as the hive will be on your property that shouldn’t be a problem. Again, the promise of honey can go a long way. Know when to back down, though, like in the case of a severe bee allergy. As discussed above, there are other options, and you don’t want a feud on your hands!
While you can get by perfectly fine doing your own research, sometimes having a mentor can be invaluable. A mentor can mean a lot of things, from someone who’s willing to let you observe them in their own hive for a year to someone who’s just willing to answer the if you have a problem you can’t quite figure out on your own. It all depends upon what you’re looking for and, of course, what your resources are.
There are more beekeepers around than you may think! If you’re looking for a mentor, or just someone to talk shop with, start asking around. Call your local extension – they may even have classes. Ask around town – someone may have an aunt or a friend of a friend who keeps bees and would love to gush.
For a more streamlined approach, check out the Apiary Inspectors of America. They have a directory for each US state and Canadian province that will guide you to government and university experts, as well as the state’s beekeeping association. These are also excellent resources for making sure your hive’s registration and inspection are up to snuff.
Often when you take on a new hobby, it’s good to start small. It’s the same case for beekeeping, isn’t it? Not necessarily…
Honey bees are living things, and while we do our best to care for and understand them, sometimes we fall a little short. Sometimes they die. Sometimes they leave. Sometimes this happens even if we do everything right. The problem is that if this happens to your one and only colony, you’re flat out of luck. Packaged bees are very hard to come by outside of spring, and even if you do find some, their chance of building up enough reserves to survive the winter are slimmer. If you lose your only colony you will, most likely, be waiting for the spring to give it another go.
If you have two or three colonies to start with, however, the loss of one goes from a devastating blow to just a sad setback and, possibly, a learning experience. You’ll still be able to see the season through, and you’ll still get honey. Just not as much.
Another good reason to start with more than one hive is comparison. If you’d never owned a dog before, and your brand new dog started meowing, would you know something was odd? Get two dogs, however, and chances are they both won’t be meowing, and you’ll probably get the sense that something is amiss.
It’s the same with bees, except they’re a lot less familiar than dogs. With only one colony, it’s going to be a lot harder to determine which behavior is a warning sign and which is bee business as usual. If you have two or more colonies, though, you’ll have direct samples to compare. It’s not foolproof, of course – an environmental problem or disease could affect all of your hives at once – but it’s a big step in the right direction.
You may be hesitant to start more than one hive, but most of the reasons that come up are not nearly the problem you might think. A common worry is that with multiple hives, there won’t be enough food to go around. In reality, bees will travel miles to collect nectar and pollen, and the likelihood that there aren’t enough flowers within that radius of your hives is very low. Your single colony would probably already be competing with faraway bees you don’t even know about.
Bees really don’t mind having close neighbors – they can smell which hive is theirs and won’t get confused, and as long as you leave six to eight inches of space between hives, they’ll be perfectly happy and you’ll hardly lose any more space in your yard.
Time is another concern, but once you’ve gotten all your equipment together and actually made your way to the hives, the time it takes to check on one more isn’t going to be much. The longer you have a hive open, the angrier the bees get, and you really shouldn’t be in there for more than fifteen minutes at a time.
So why would anyone have only one hive? It all comes down, unfortunately, to cost. Each new hive is going to run at least $150, which is a lot of money to add on top of an already expensive startup price.
Basically, if you can afford to start two or even three hives, you should. The benefits are definitely there. If you can’t or simply aren’t willing to spend the extra money, though, there’s nothing that says you can’t have a single hive, or that that hive won’t be successful. Do what works for you.
In the last article we talked about three main types of hive: Langstroth, Warre, and Top Bar. Each one has its own merits and drawbacks, and it’s ultimately up to you to decide which is the best fit. For the beginner, however, Langstroth is probably a good option.
Is it easier? Not necessarily. Especially if you have trouble lifting heavy things, Top Bar is a better choice. Langstroth is the most popular, though, and if you’re just starting out that can be a real advantage. You’re much more likely to find a mentor for a Langstroth hive. You’re much more likely to find readily available equipment. You’re also going to find a lot more written material, like right here. Soon we’ll have articles devoted to Warre and Top Bar hives, but since Langstroth is the first for so many, this is what we’ll focus on for now, with a few nods to Warre and Top Bar.
As you may have noticed in our last article, there’s quite a lot of equipment involved in getting a beehive going. It is, there’s no denying it, an expensive start. It’s very good to keep in mind, however, that almost everything you have to buy this first time will last virtually forever.
The first year demands that you buy everything. The second year demands new foundation for your frames (if you’re even using foundation), a new queen if your old one gets lackluster, and treatment for parasites and disease. According to Illinois State University, the annual expense of a healthy beehive over a seven year period is $80-85. That’s including that big pile of money at the beginning. Essentially, there will always be some costs, but if you play your cards right and get lucky, the costs will be small, and you’ll never again have to pay as much as you did that first day you ordered all your new stuff.
Some beekeepers save money by buying used equipment. This is a possibility, but you have to be extremely careful. Beehives can get infested with all kinds of diseases and pests that travel with the equipment. You never want a sick hive, and you especially don’t want to start with one if it can be prevented. If you’re going to buy used equipment, insist that the seller show you certification that it’s been inspected by the state very recently.
Some other beekeepers save money by building their own equipment. This is also a possibility, but also requires you to be very careful. Disease may not be a problem, but dimensions are. Bees need something called “bee space” – a distance of about a centimeter between frames – that discourages them from fusing the frames together and making them impossible to remove without destroying the comb. Ensuring that you have the right bee space requires careful planning and measurement and a decent amount of carpentry skill. It also requires a decent amount of lumber, and the costs in the end may not be that much lower than those of a store bought hive.
The bottom line is that if you’re a beginner, the best route to take is to buy your equipment from a beekeeping supplier. This way you know the parts will fit together and be free of disease. Take a look at a beekeeping supply site, though – there are a whole lot of pieces, aren’t there? You can, if you want, buy every component by itself. But there’s no real reason to, when so many starter kits are available.
Beekeeping starter kits are a great option because they work out to be cheaper than each piece bought individually. They’re also guaranteed to have compatible parts. Langstroth hives tend to hold either eight or ten frames. Both are fine on their own, but if you buy one eight-frame super and one ten-frame super, you’re in serious trouble. A kit saves you from the sinking realization, when you open up the box, that you’ve missed something important.
Kits tend to come with tools (like a smoker and hive tool), clothing (like gloves and a veil), a book. The hive itself may be sold separately to offer you flexibility or part of the overall kit. The price can range from $99-$500. What do you get for that extra money? More supers, for one thing. The most basic kits come with only one hive body, where your bees will do all their living and storing. It will get you started, but you can’t really harvest honey from it. Granted, some colonies don’t produce enough extra honey to harvest in the first year anyway, so if you’re willing to be patient a single brood box is fine to start with… as long as your winters aren’t too harsh.
Bees need to store honey to survive the winter, and the longer and colder it is the more honey they’ll need. If your winters tend to be bad, you should buy a kit with two deep supers that can be used as brood boxes. If you want to try collecting honey in your first year, you should buy a kit that also has a medium super for honey. Kits with both of these start at around $300.
Another thing you’ll notice as you wade through all the possible equipment is that hives tend to be split into two categories: assembled and unassembled. It’s just what it sounds like – you can choose to have your hive delivered in pieces or, for a higher price, all put together. This choice has no bearing on the bees or the final hive product – it’s just down to your commitment and skill with a hammer.
Assembling a hive isn’t rocket science, but it does have to be done right. It’s a nice time to have a mentor who’s done it before and can assure you that all those parts really do fit together. The next article has in depth instructions on how to put together an unassembled hive to help guide you through.
In the end, it’s up to you. Buying an unassembled kit is a good way to save some money and get more involved in the process. On the other hand, buying an assembled kit assures you, for just a little extra money, that your hive is put together correctly.
There’s one more dilemma to face when picking out your equipment: which type of foundation to use. Foundation is the thin sheet of stuff that fits in the frames. The bees will cover it with wax and then draw the wax out into the hexagonal cells of their comb. It is, literally, the foundation of their home. There are three main routes you can take with foundation, and each has its strong supporters.
The first is beeswax in a wooden frame. The beeswax comes in a thin, flat sheet that’s been stamped on both sides with a hexagonal pattern. The bees will follow this pattern to make nice, uniform hexagonal cells. Beeswax foundation comes in thick and thin varieties. The thick beeswax foundation has crimped wire embedded in it for extra support, and should be used in the hive body for brood production and in your honey super if you’re going to extract the honey.
The wire supports end in hooks that help fix the foundation to the frame. The thin foundation, also called surplus foundation, has no wires and should be used in your honey super if you’re planning on eating or selling honey with the comb included, often called cut comb honey. If you’re looking for cut comb honey, wax is a necessity. Even if you’re not, a lot of beekeepers prefer beeswax foundation because it’s more natural.
The next type of foundation is plastic in a wooden frame. This thin sheet of plastic has a stamped pattern just like the beeswax foundation. It has no wires or hooks, and simply snaps into place in the frame. It’s coated in a thin layer of wax to keep the bees happy. Plastic is obviously more durable than beeswax and won’t have to be replaced for years. It’s also much easier to install.
Another foundation option is all plastic. It’s similar to the plastic above, except in this version the foundation and the frame are combined into a single piece of moulded plastic coated in beeswax. This version is even more durable and requires no installation at all.
There is one more option, and that’s to avoid foundation altogether. Both the Warre and Top Bar hives are foundationless, and some Langstroth hive owners swear by it as well. Bees in the wild don’t start out with any foundation, and some beekeepers like to keep their hive environment as natural as possible.
Foundation does force the bees to build a fixed cell size that is smaller than the size required for drone brood, resulting in about a quarter of the drone production of what you see in the wild. Since drones aren’t necessary to the health of a colony, most beekeepers see this as a fine sacrifice, though some believe it’s resulting in a long term weakening of the honey bee gene pool.
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