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What are some of your cost-saving methods?

57K views 249 replies 52 participants last post by  crofter 
#1 ·
The cost of beekeeping can vary a lot.

And if a person decides to "go big" and get into beekeeping up over 50 hives, the costs can really begin to add up - time and money.

Take for instance the hive cover of a typical langstroth:

If you go the route of a store-bought inner and outer cover, you can pay $30 or more per hive. Over the course of 50 hives, that's $1500 plus tax and/or shipping. On the other hand, if you go the root of a piece of reclaimed ply for an outer, and a feed bag for an inner - you could do the whole lot for $100 or even less. If the remaining $1400 is applied in an equally frugal way, you could probably do a lot. It all depends on who you are, how you approach things, and how much you're prepared to spend on your bees.

So for those of you who set your mind to economy, what have you done to save your pennies? How would you advise a beekeeper to design or manage their operation to save time and/or money?


Adam
 
#31 ·
Juniper, or "Taskate" in native Tarahumara is used for many diferent home remedies by the locals. The Creosote Bush or "Gobernadora", is used by the Tarahumara people to heal some types of cancer and many different things. We use both at the orphanages. The Creosote tea, is used to soak the children feet and that cures athletes foot. If you wait for it to bloom, you can make a paste with the flowers and cover bad bruises or cuts and they will not get infected and heal soon. The taskate is brewed into a strong tea and mixed with honey for respiratory problems.
 
#33 ·
I try to make everything I can, if it is cost effective. I do not factor in time because its a hobby and something I like doing.

I make my own nucs using the Coates design.
I made my own extractor for a 1/6th of the cost of a new one.
I make my own tops, telescoping covers till now, migratory from here on out.
I make my own SBB, but after I use up the mesh I have I will go to solid bottom boards and see how that pans out.
I buy boxes but will start making my own soon as well.
I will keep buying frames because I can save on other things and just dont want to mess with them.
I collect swarms and split instead of buying bees. That is a huge savings and catching swarms also educates the public.

Since my start in beekeeping I have learned a lot from here, and from trial and error. I am learning where I can make short cuts, and where I shouldnt. I still love sitting and watching the bees, so that is why I am trying to get more efficient when working them so I can spend more time watching instead of working!
 
#34 ·
Other than raising my own stocks, which is of course huge, weighing hives to determine the correct amount to feed for winter...if they need feeding...has saved me big time.

I used to heft the back of my hives to estimate weight. That works okay, but trouble is, after a yard or two they all feel heavy. So, I always overfed...just to be sure. When feeding bees, it's just like feeding teenagers. They have hollow legs. I could easily overfeed my bees one, two, three or more gallons of 2:1. At $4/gallon, and almost 700 colonies...I could spend a fortune on sugar that the bees don't really need.
 
#35 ·
With all due respect Mr. Palmer, where does the 'what they don't need' go? Into early spring feed, which is fuel to forage the nectar made into honey, that is accumulated at an earlier time?

Or am I wrong as usual.... :)
 
#37 ·
Nothing wrong, and a valid question...

Certainly, any extra feed is in the hive and can be used. But, if a colony requires say 80 pounds of stores to winter, and they have 100+, what's the point of feeding more just to be sure? That extra feed will be there in the spring as honey not consumed. It will then be there taking up space needed for colony expansion. But the greatest benefit in my apiary is in the savings on my feed bill. If they don't need it, I can't afford to feed it.by weighing every hive, I know. Also, it helps me in my breeder queen selection. I look for colonies in each apiary that make the best honey crop without needing any additional feed. If a colony produces 100 pounds of honey but has to be fed 50 pounds of sugar, isn't the real production of that colony actually only 50 pounds?

I don't routinely feed sugar to every colony. I try to manage my bees so they don't need extra feed in the fall. Usually, proper supering...not adding that extra super for goldenrod...and proper management and breeding, means heavy colonies going into winter.

Does that make sense Ozone?
 
#38 ·
.... don't feed....QUOTE]

How is a ban on feeding sugar in your apiary a cost-saving method? If the colony needs feed to survive until spring, and you don't, you have a dead colony that has to be replaced. And, figure the cost of the replacement bees and lost honey production next summer.

The correct method, in my opinion, would be to feed colonies that need feeding, and requeen them next season with queens raised from colonies that didn't need any additional feed.

Acebird, are you a beekeeper or a bee-haver?
 
#39 ·
Hi Adam, this is an excellent question and one that provides a lot of interesting responses. This question is probably what makes beekeeping so interesting and exciting. I had the exact same question about 10 years ago and I still am looking for the answer. Efficiency all lies in you operation set up, from you hive equipment set up to your honey house set up.
Basically my answer is to look at or try a few different equipment approaches to manage your hives, find the one that seems to fit your management route-en, and then switch everything to that equipment management style.
Once you have made a choice on equipment, DO NOT LOOK BACK.
There is nothing more expensive than choosing one system, then wanting to change it out completely so research and test different approaches before you decide on a system.

So, Ill tell you what equipment design I settled on,

What I run is single and double brood hives, with a migratory lid on top, and a two hive bottom board pallet underneath. I feed through a hole in the top of the migratory cover which I plug with a plastic bung. I use a 2.5 gallon feed pail to feed spring and fall.
Pallets for everything. The hives are on bottom board pallets, honey boxes are hauled on pallets, pails are hauled in tote crates. I use two totes tanks to haul feed around to the yards with and I have two 2500 gallon tanks that will take a tanker of syrup.
I use a lift truck for all my honeyhouse work, and a skid steer anywhere else outside.
I have two satisfied 52 foot dry van trailers which I use for hauling and storage. During the winter I fill them with boxes and equipment. Through the production season I use them as empty and full barrel storage. I will send the van to my barrel supplier to pick up my empty barrels, and as I fill barrels I store them in the other dry van trailer. When the van is filled with honey, I send the trailer to my packer for honey delivery. Works real slick, and saves so much space in my honey house and also save me from having to move barrels of honey more than once.
 
#46 ·
Well I have a slightly different take on the question. I have never lowered my overall expenses but I most definitely lowered my average cost per hive. Standardize what you are doing so that you can run more hives with the same amount of labor. Spend the money that it takes to make you as efficient as possible. It's really, really difficult to quantify the value of efficiency to your bottom line until you realize at the end of the year that you have more hives full of bees and more barrels full of honey and you have done it all in approximately the same number of man hours. We used to run about 1,000 hives per full time beekeeper and now it's closer to 1,500. One more thing (and I'm pretty sure I am in a minority with this statement) your goal needs to be spending full time doing beekeeping related activities. I don't spend a lot of my time doing mechanical work, carpenter work or anything else not directly related to beekeeping. Beekeeping is the only thing that I am much good at so I hire folks that know what they are doing to do all that other stuff.
 
#48 ·
I don't spend a lot of my time doing mechanical work, carpenter work or anything else not directly related to beekeeping. Beekeeping is the only thing that I am much good at so I hire folks that know what they are doing to do all that other stuff.
Well Jim you are talking about scale. If your father handed you a thriving business you can just keep the flywheel rolling pretty easy. If you had to start from scratch then you pretty much started as chief cook and bottle washer with a broom handle stuck up your butt to sweep the floors. Not to belittle your ability but money breads money. It is a lot harder when you come from the geto.
 
#50 ·
You missed his point I think. Basically, do what you do best and pay someone else to do the rest. It is not efficient for me to go to deisel mechanic school, buy all the necassery specialized tools and maintain a garage when I can pay someone else to do that, and better.
 
#53 ·
You missed his point I think. Basically, do what you do best and pay someone else to do the rest.
I think I understood that but you have to get yourself to a point where you have that luxury. Unless you were handed a going business, inheritance, or a wad of money the way you approach starting a business is different. Blood sweat and tears is the usual approach for someone starting from scratch.
 
#58 ·
Not sure Bubbles... I don't count mites and only worry about them when I see them, which isn't that often. I know they are there, but frankly, bears are a bigger problem to me. Smoking with One Seed Juniper or Creosote is a local Mexico/New Mexico thing. It is taught to many of the new beekeepers here. They also teach most of us that the wild bees here are here because they have learned to adapt, and we should not worry about the mites so much. We definitely have true wild bees here for the most part and not escapees.

I am not sure how accurate the count would be anyway as far as determining how effective it is. I use natural comb and some small cell, Mid-summer brood breaks, mostly feral bees, occasional juniper smoking, and no other real treatments. I have also observed my wild bees grooming mites off each other too. Could be a combination of all these factors. Or it could be that I start fresh nucs every year from splits and constantly cycle through my hives. Whatever it is, it seems to work for me.

The mite drop test would not really tell how infected they were in my opinion. Don't really have time for it anyway. I would rather lose the weak hive to mites and breed from the strong one that is not affected. Haven't had it happen yet.

I do have some first year domestic Italians down in the desert. Maybe If I have problems with them in the future I can eliminate some of these factors and narrow it down.
 
#61 ·
I thank those of you who have been contributing to the topic of the thread.

I think efficiency is really key to anyone who is interested in beekeeping beyond a few hives. I am thinking of growth, and the most pressing questions to me revolve around what I want my overall approach to be. I hate to waste time, money, materials - and bees on bad ideas, or poorly thought-out inventions.

Mike Palmer, how do you weigh your hives? What kind of scale do you use in the field?

Thanks,

ADam
 
#66 ·
Most things I do, I try to do efficiently. Planning and maintaining my handful of yards is one area. Working efficiently in my wood shop to produce all my woodenware is another. A third is in obtaining information. Using the ignore button on a certain pest plaguing this forum has improved my efficiency in the information department.

Wayne
 
#78 ·
Oh no, don't get me wrong. I'm a designer myself, so I'm all for inventions. It's just that those inventions need (for me) to be based on sound thinking, and informed foresight, so that they fit in with the overall picture. I hate to be making something to deal with a problem, only to find out after that it really doesn't work well and I've used a bunch of material to do it.

Unavoidable to some extent, but I just really try to keep the "big misses" to a minimum.

Adam
 
#69 ·
But Wayne, your missing out on the humorous part of each thread due to the ignore button!

Yes, it would be easy and cheap to just starve my bees and just catch more swarms in the spring, but I really like my genetics and demeanor of the stock I have right now and want to try and keep that. Plus, is it the bees fault that there was a large dearth this year? They did the best they could with what resources they had available. I think we as beekeepers should do our best to sustain the colonies we are keeping, after all we ARE beekeepers, right Acebird?
 
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