How Big, How Fast?

[JJason1010]

I started this year with 4 hives and am looking to grow for next season. Can anyone reccomend how many I should go to, and still be managable for 1 person. I've heard others say 100 hives is managable for 1 preson.
I live in the city- a few mins to the local fields- potential places for hives. Should i buy the hives before the Canadian winter season or in spring.
I'd also be interested to know how you started and what number you grew to over how many years.
For me the Honey Bees are fun, sm. extra source of income as I have a FT job. Would consider being a FT Beekeeper.

Thanks, J

[Vance G]

I love your city! Been many years since I have been there but remember it very fondly. I would go to ten colonies next year and see how that fits into your life. I restarted beekeeping last year with six nucs, split that to a dozen and went up nearly fifty this spring. Then the wheels came off! I didn't get queens I ordered for May FROM RUSSELLS ,and got some leftovers from a package supplier that were in the cage two long and all but two failed or were superceded sometimes repeatedly. We had a cold wet spring that resulted in a very poor take on the queens I raised. Then it went instantly to boiling hot and no rain. Just imagine how much madder my wife would have been if I had went to a hundred and Russels had stuck me for $2000 worth of queens instead of $546. The way it has turned out, I haven't lost more than I can recoup.

Keep honest records of your time, costs and miles so you can figure out if there is a full time living possible. Going slow allows you to learn as you go. I would agree that a hundred hives is an achievable part time goal. Any bigger than that and overhead gets larger and larger and profitability gets much harder. Most important, is your family life stable enough to spend the time building your little empire? Always remember that nothing really matters unless the family needs are met first. Best of luck and have fun.

[JJason1010]

Thanks Vance, great advice. It's tough for me to go slow, but I do think that's best as well. I have a partner in our 4 hives and we bought a new 4 frame deep extractor. So maybe 20 hives next year will be a good jump.
At 4 hives we are managing to sell all our honey at local markets once we extract. I can foresee a problem with 20 hives-a lot of honey. Around here u need to produce 5000 pounds to sell to the local Co-op, I believe. Any other ideas of how to get rid of all the honey?
My goal is to produce a great product, manage my bees well and earn a little extra money for a winter vacation, and teach my 2 girls a little along the way.
I also agree, Family first.
J

[Charlie B]

I started last year with 2 packages. I learned how to catch swarms and went through winter with 17. This spring I did splits with my strongest hives and now have 30. I only sell to three different retailers but so far I have re-couped all my initial investment and I'm just starting to run in the black. The biggest mistake I've made is buying a small extractor but you can easily sell it on Craigslist and buy bigger.

I plan on expanding to 100 next year but that's really all I want to do. I can see though that you can make some good money if you take it slow and don't go crazy.

When I just started, I was only planning to do it as a hobby but if it's something you like to do with positive cash flow, why not do it full time?

[stripstrike]

I started with two nucs. The next year they were split to a total of eight. This, my third year, I got it bad and bought fifty packages. I'm at fifty-nine now and will probably hit winter at fifty-five or so after combining the weaker hives. My goal too is about 100 colonies, 2013 or '14.

I make all my tops, bottoms, and feeders and only purchase boxes and frames, and those in pretty good chunks to keep prices down. I also have a neighboring beekeeper kind enough to lend his extracting equipment so I haven't had to bite that bullet yet. This years packages got my hive count up fast, but there was very little time for anything else. I can tell you that 50 new packages DEMAND some time commitment for the first couple or eight weeks, especially if you get supersedures or some poor queens as you're bound to get with that number. I call my wife the bee widow now.


My expansion next year will depend on where I can find new yards and how close they are to home or existing yards. Drive time is a PITA and propolis/honey/syrup on my shift knob annoys me. I think 100 established colonies is about the max I could handle, it's the new and young ones that drain your time. You definitely learn to be more critical or hard-hearted when dealing with this many colonies.

[sqkcrk]

How much money do you have to invest? If you want to run 100 colonies, you can buy them. I bought two different operations which each had 200 and 250 live colonies when I bought them. Grew that number to 800 in a cpl of yrs.

[johng]

Go slow. Build your customer base as you go. You have real winters to deal with once you get a few under your belt you will have a better idea of how many hives you can handle. 15-20 to start with would give you some good hands on experience and a fair amout of honey to deal with. Try to pay for equipment as you go.

[odfrank]

I plan on expanding to 100 next year but that's really all I want to do. I can see though that you can make some good money if you take it slow and don't go crazy.

What is the cost to expand 70 hives in one year? You will quickly need seven or more medium supers for each hive, 70 tops and bottoms, 70 excluders, seven 10 hive sites, the truck to haul it all in, facilities in which to store the four hundred honey supers and extract the 7500 lbs. of honey. Plus the time to build them, install the bees, maintain the hives, pull, extract, package and sell the crop. Do you have the strength and stamina to do it all by yourself or are you hiring labor?

[AmericasBeekeeper]

I have seen the most success over the decades from beekeepers that only grew by splits, learning as they are growing. Beekeepers that "bought into it" had a steep learning curve and lost a disproportionate portion of their investment. Myself and father included, I grew by splits. Dad bought complete hives.

[Jaseemtp]

I would like to get to 100 hives myself. I started with just 3 packages but have increased by catching swarms and doing splits. Now I am in the 40s at 2 years into it. As others have said going slow is the best way, but with my work schedual I am off alot and do not mind making most of my equipment. I have had some pretty hard lessons and lost several hives due to lack of knowledge.
If you have the patience then go slow and enjoy it. ( even though I did not )
Jason

[Paul McCarty]

I went from 3 overwintered last year, to 15 hives this season. Hopefully next season I can double that number. Originally started with two packages when a bear wiped me out and I had to pick up the pieces.

[dnichols]

I began thinking about raising bees two years ago. I was going to jump right into it with my brother as a partner. He talked me out of it after he had a conversation with a local beekeeper who was hit hard with losses the previous year. This gave the him a bad taste in his mouth. He shared those sentiments with my brother who quickly bowed out of our idea. I walked away forlorn but kept reading and learning and promised myself that someday I would start.

Well this year was the year. It was scary at first and it had a pretty steep learning curve. I started with two packs in mid April. Prior to buying the packs I bought one hive set as a pattern and proceeded to build my own hives. I am a teacher now but grew up in the family construction buisness. I am blessed that my Dad has a well stocked wood shop and as his hobby owns and operates a Woodmizer mill. I get my wood for free.

Anyways two weeks didn't pass when I caught the 'bug". I was hooked. I ordered another package and said that would be it. Then at the end of May my brothers ex-father-in-law (Jim) (long story) calls me and says he wants to start beekeeping. I told him that was great but getting bees may be an issue. In the meantime I landed a nuc from a Gil on this forum. Now I have four hives. I called Jim and let him know that Gil had nucs. He calls and orders four. One for himself, his son and two for his neighbor. His neighbor decides he just wanted one. Jim calls me and says "you want a nuc". What would you say? Sure! Now I have five. One hive lost a queen, requeened and lost that queen, at least I thought. I split that hive into four-five frame nucs, requeened them and newspaper combined the rest with a weaker hive I had 9this hive suffered from an early bout with chalkbrood, all better now though. Now I had 8. The other day with the help of a friend broke a "hottish" hive into another four-four frame nucs and kept the rest in a 10 frame hive body with a partially full honey super. Now I have 12 hives. (if they all survive) there is always a caveat to this. Am I crazy, yeah probably. But it's fun. Keep it fun and split when you can. I am not sure what I will do next year. I met some great folks on this forum and have gotten some great advice and even gained a friend/mentor nearby. I am going to keep at it and maybe ask the bees what they want to do.

Best of luck.

D-

[Allen]

I'm 48 in a few weeks and am looking at beekeeping as a way to have some retirement income.
Never really plan to retire but I'm sure that SS won't be there when it's my turn.
We started with 5 colonies this year, plan on expanding to 10 in Spring.
I've got leads on two possible bee yards and will be adding a half dozen or so Nucs for their resource potential.
Would like to get to 100 colonies also but we are going to take our time and do that in a ten year or so plan.

I do have the time to do this.
Our portrait photography business has taken a major hit the last two years for several reasons and the blacksmithing isn't so busy either.
Don't want to be a senior class photographer forever. The bees are so less stressful...

[Paul McCarty]

Allen, that is my plan too. I am a firefighter who sustained an injury and can no longer work as a firefighter. I am in the process of retiring. I will be 43 next weekend. I have 12 different bee yards at this point (not all have bees), and 15 hives. I have a few hives in each location, and will be splitting them up as I grow larger I do not wish to exceed around a 12 hives at any particular location. In my state, you can stay under 25 hives per yard in my region, and still be classed as a hobby beekeeper. You can have as many yards as you want. The limiting factor is how much do you want to travel to work bees. I try to keep them close and pretty much permanent locations, to avoid a lot of travel. Not really interested in migratory beekeeping - mostly interested in varietal honey. Most of my yards are in the desert - lot's of mesquite and stuff like that. Most of my bees are feral - caught from swarms and cut-outs.

[Allen]

Hey Paul, small world.
I've been a volunteer EMT and firefighter since 1983.
Sorry to hear about your injury. I've been nursing a frozen shoulder for over a year that happened from loading a thousand feet of LDH one day.
We are fortunate to have both future bee yards about ten minutes away in either direction.
A plus is that both are on farms where I hunt groundhogs...
Honey, I've got to check the bees again... Yeah, I was just there yesterday but they need more TLC. Actually my wife supports my red mist addiction... LOL
Our terrain is a mixture of small mountains, meadows and farm land and was thinking about 15 hives at each spot.
The locations are near blue marsh lake which should have loads of great habitat for bees around it.
We'll have to see what each spot can support though.

Btw, because of state regulations on where you can extract and bottle honey, my department is allowing us to use the commercial kitchen at my home station (our department has four stations) for that purpose.

[Paul McCarty]

I have been a career firefighter for 20 years. I am a Captain in the career department and also the Fire Chief of my local volunteer department. I work with my bees every day. Some days it seems I work more on them than I do for my real job. Sun up to sun down - not to mention removals. Very little time for anything else. there is always something needing to be done, and I always seem to be three hive boxes behind for growing colonies. I am either building, checking, or moving something every day. I know it's a small operation by most standards, but it is definitely less of a hobby and more of a second job at this point - albeit the pay is not very good yet. Hopefully I can break even someday.

[squareandcompasses]

For 1 person working, you can up about 1000 hives, not just 100

[odfrank]

For 1 person working, you can up about 1000 hives, not just 100

Average honey production in my area is 75lbs per hive. You are suggesting I lift 75000 lbs. of honey several times a year by myself? Should I trade in my hand crank extractor for a power unit?

[Keth Comollo]

1000 hives is a lot of work for three people especially if you have some queen breeding going on (which you should). Add to that the cost of the honey house and a literal warehouse of woodenware.

Go work for a commercial apiary for a few months and you will soon learn what you need to know. It is hard work.

[squareandcompasses]

Average honey production in my area is 75lbs per hive. You are suggesting I lift 75000 lbs. of honey several times a year by myself? Should I trade in my hand crank extractor for a power unit?

Yes, but I suggest upgrading equipment if you plan to do 1k hives IE Forklift