How much money do beekeepers make a year? How many hives would it take to make 100 grand? My stepfather is a hobbyist beekeeper and I'm thinking about starting up my own business. Any thoughts? Thanks,
Michael
Michael
MikeyReej
The money is in the marketing and products. Beekeeping is a type of farming and the weather plays too much role to consistently predict anything.
But if you are average, the average in MI is 80lbs/hive per year. So say you get 8000lbs of honey. If you sell that wholesale you just made $8000 and are now way behind. If you sell at market price you will get say $3/lb and $24,000. If you can convince people you have the best gourmet honey available you can get $5 or $6/lb and a lot higher.
Then there is the wax products (cosmetics) that people might buy. And the flavored honey and the spun honey and the flavored spun honey and the honey sticks and..and..
And then there is the making and selling queen and nucs ....
And pollination....
And it is all a LOT of work to make it all work. I prefer to sit back and enjoy the bees, not do all that work.
There are a lot of possibilities, but most of them need a good business model and marketing plan for them to work. If you are like me and not a business oriented person, then you probably won't make much money.
But if you are average, the average in MI is 80lbs/hive per year. So say you get 8000lbs of honey. If you sell that wholesale you just made $8000 and are now way behind. If you sell at market price you will get say $3/lb and $24,000. If you can convince people you have the best gourmet honey available you can get $5 or $6/lb and a lot higher.
Then there is the wax products (cosmetics) that people might buy. And the flavored honey and the spun honey and the flavored spun honey and the honey sticks and..and..
And then there is the making and selling queen and nucs ....
And pollination....
And it is all a LOT of work to make it all work. I prefer to sit back and enjoy the bees, not do all that work.
There are a lot of possibilities, but most of them need a good business model and marketing plan for them to work. If you are like me and not a business oriented person, then you probably won't make much money.
Scadsofbees is pretty much right on. It's not a simple task. Like farming there are good years and bad years....bigger doesn't mean you will make more because your costs go up. And depending on where in the country you live will have much to do as to where you can gain the most from the different bee "products" thats scads talked about.
I think everyone will advise you to start small...real small and work up. You will find at what level you can work things to come in at least even. If you are losing constantly...try corn.
I think everyone will advise you to start small...real small and work up. You will find at what level you can work things to come in at least even. If you are losing constantly...try corn.
I have just hit that 100 mark this year. I started about 5 years ago, and I can say that if it were not for the income I receive from removals and swarm capture, I would definately be in the red (I happen to be in a unique position, as I have two sons who are full time students, but are available during most of the busy season to do removals during the week for me while I continue to work a full time day job). As for actual income from 100 hives, I won't have any reliable history for a couple of years so unfortunatley I am of little help in answering your question.
Michael,
I'm sure that someone can answer your question. There are alot of "experts" out there.
I took in $90,000.00 during the years that I had around 800 colonies and the nectar flows were good and the mites weren't too awfully bad. I also had 80 some thousand dollars in expenses. So you do the math.
My advice to you is, if you want to try to make money at beekeeping you should only buy what you have the money in hand to spend. In other words don't do it on credit. You'll always be in debt.
So grow slowly and reinvest your profit, if you find any. Then you'll be the one to answer this question in the future and you'll be able to tell us how you did it.
Best of luck.
I'm sure that someone can answer your question. There are alot of "experts" out there.
I took in $90,000.00 during the years that I had around 800 colonies and the nectar flows were good and the mites weren't too awfully bad. I also had 80 some thousand dollars in expenses. So you do the math.
My advice to you is, if you want to try to make money at beekeeping you should only buy what you have the money in hand to spend. In other words don't do it on credit. You'll always be in debt.
So grow slowly and reinvest your profit, if you find any. Then you'll be the one to answer this question in the future and you'll be able to tell us how you did it.
Best of luck.
Absolutely develop your own market and skip the sale to packers. You also need to think beyond just honey. Wax, pollen, propolis, pollination, swarm removal, nucs, queen rearing, other value added honey products, etc. Some of these can help even out the income when the honey crop is down.
But there are good years and bad, and it's certainly far from the steady income of a regular job.
-Tim
But there are good years and bad, and it's certainly far from the steady income of a regular job.
-Tim
For me, what Tim mentioned is the key to success. Diversification.
My bees make honey only twice in a year, and one of those times takes a lot of moving and gas. So if I stay and wait for the blackberries, afterwards they aren't going to bring in more honey. Well, some but not much. On the other hand, they will continue to bring in pollen, which I'm trapping. Pollen is worth more than honey in my local market, way more. They'll continue to collect propolis and I'll continue to save it. I'll cut out bees when they pay me to do so. I'll sell a frame of brood or nuc as the opportunity permits. I'll even do some (lightweight) pollination for a local farm. The wax can be made into candles. The honey, creamed, flavored and packaged. If I just wait on honey that's one payout once a year. It's the other things that give a trickle of income throughout the other months.
I'm a comitted hobby beekeeper (meaning I should be committed, I guess) so for me there's no downside to a lost sale. Doesn't mean I don't enjoy the transition from season to season, product to product. There's more to the hive than honey.
My bees make honey only twice in a year, and one of those times takes a lot of moving and gas. So if I stay and wait for the blackberries, afterwards they aren't going to bring in more honey. Well, some but not much. On the other hand, they will continue to bring in pollen, which I'm trapping. Pollen is worth more than honey in my local market, way more. They'll continue to collect propolis and I'll continue to save it. I'll cut out bees when they pay me to do so. I'll sell a frame of brood or nuc as the opportunity permits. I'll even do some (lightweight) pollination for a local farm. The wax can be made into candles. The honey, creamed, flavored and packaged. If I just wait on honey that's one payout once a year. It's the other things that give a trickle of income throughout the other months.
I'm a comitted hobby beekeeper (meaning I should be committed, I guess) so for me there's no downside to a lost sale. Doesn't mean I don't enjoy the transition from season to season, product to product. There's more to the hive than honey.
Where are you going to keep the 100 hives? if kept on your own property, so you don't have to travel to manage the hives, you might just break even sometimes. If you add up the costs of Fuel, Vehicle registration and insurance, Medications and feed for the bees, costs of queen bees/packaged bees for failures if you don't raise your own queens, county registration fees, etc., it seems like a losing propostion to me! So, I choose to keep 8 to 12 hives here at the house just to give me something of interest to play around with.
Any business that doesn't profit will go under within a few years, if that. There has to be some money in it to stay in business. Most beekeepers like anyone else, just don't want to tell you what they make, because it's no one's business but their's and the IRS.
I have twenty five hives. This year I should pull in more than $2000 just in honey production, not including comb honey, pollination, nucs, queens, and other hive products. My estimated cost for the year, less than $400. In other years, that could be as high as $600.
There is profit to be made, you just have to find it. The problem comes when you lose a large portion of your hives to the winter.
As others have said, you need more than just honey. Consider honey a product that will pay for your running costs and expansion. The real money is in nucs, queens, pollination, and other hive products. Next year I will spend all that profit on expansion, that is where the money goes, equipment.
If you want to be a commercial beekeeper, learn to cut costs. Raise your own queens. Stop buying packages, and nucs after you have enough hives to fuel your own expansion. Buy used equipment (except for frames). Then learn to sell your own nucs and queens. The only queens that you should be ordering will go into your nucs. If you live in the north, learn to raise them the previous year and bank them for next year. Learn to overwinter nucs, and split like crazy, but not to much that they will not be able to survive.
I've figured out that the key to success is marketing, time management, cutting costs, and being able to replace your loses without to much investment. If you are running a commercial operation with a cost of more than 50% of your cashflow, you need to rethink your business model. Lets brake it down:
100 hives: Not including initial investment of equipment. That is assumed that the beekeeper will reinvest in expansion using the profits.
If you are good at overwintering nucs to replace loses, at least 90% of your hives should produce. Since this is a small operation, I will assume only 10% for pollination survices, obviously, this could be much higher if the beekeeper is good at marketing. And not counting things like comb honey, or retail sales that most beekeepers do. Not including any other hive products, or nuc and queen sales. Assuming the beekeeper raises his/her own queens.
90 x 80 = 7200lbs of honey = $8640 (1.20 per lb wholesale in my area)
10 hives for pollination 40 x 10 = $400
Total = $9040
Costs:
Gas = about $1000 (trying to overestimate this, if the beekeeper is responsible with keeping fuel costs at a min)
Mite treatment = 3.00 per hive, $300
Any other treatments = average of 3.00 per hive, $300. Don't use treatments indiscriminately, this only raises your costs and makes deases more immune to the treatments.
Assuming any misc, and additionial costs at $1000.00 (foundation, replacement frames, replacement boxes, etc) Remember, used equipment.
If you have a larger operation and have to hire employees, add an additional $1000.00 per 100 hives for part time help. Hire high school students. If you have thousands and thousands of hives, you may have to hire a few full time employees. I know a beekeeper that handled 125 hives by himself until he was 86 years old.
Total costs = $3600.00
Total profit = $5440.00
Marketing, cutting costs, time management, and replacing your loses without cutting into your production. Correct me if I missed anything.
I have twenty five hives. This year I should pull in more than $2000 just in honey production, not including comb honey, pollination, nucs, queens, and other hive products. My estimated cost for the year, less than $400. In other years, that could be as high as $600.
There is profit to be made, you just have to find it. The problem comes when you lose a large portion of your hives to the winter.
As others have said, you need more than just honey. Consider honey a product that will pay for your running costs and expansion. The real money is in nucs, queens, pollination, and other hive products. Next year I will spend all that profit on expansion, that is where the money goes, equipment.
If you want to be a commercial beekeeper, learn to cut costs. Raise your own queens. Stop buying packages, and nucs after you have enough hives to fuel your own expansion. Buy used equipment (except for frames). Then learn to sell your own nucs and queens. The only queens that you should be ordering will go into your nucs. If you live in the north, learn to raise them the previous year and bank them for next year. Learn to overwinter nucs, and split like crazy, but not to much that they will not be able to survive.
I've figured out that the key to success is marketing, time management, cutting costs, and being able to replace your loses without to much investment. If you are running a commercial operation with a cost of more than 50% of your cashflow, you need to rethink your business model. Lets brake it down:
100 hives: Not including initial investment of equipment. That is assumed that the beekeeper will reinvest in expansion using the profits.
If you are good at overwintering nucs to replace loses, at least 90% of your hives should produce. Since this is a small operation, I will assume only 10% for pollination survices, obviously, this could be much higher if the beekeeper is good at marketing. And not counting things like comb honey, or retail sales that most beekeepers do. Not including any other hive products, or nuc and queen sales. Assuming the beekeeper raises his/her own queens.
90 x 80 = 7200lbs of honey = $8640 (1.20 per lb wholesale in my area)
10 hives for pollination 40 x 10 = $400
Total = $9040
Costs:
Gas = about $1000 (trying to overestimate this, if the beekeeper is responsible with keeping fuel costs at a min)
Mite treatment = 3.00 per hive, $300
Any other treatments = average of 3.00 per hive, $300. Don't use treatments indiscriminately, this only raises your costs and makes deases more immune to the treatments.
Assuming any misc, and additionial costs at $1000.00 (foundation, replacement frames, replacement boxes, etc) Remember, used equipment.
If you have a larger operation and have to hire employees, add an additional $1000.00 per 100 hives for part time help. Hire high school students. If you have thousands and thousands of hives, you may have to hire a few full time employees. I know a beekeeper that handled 125 hives by himself until he was 86 years old.
Total costs = $3600.00
Total profit = $5440.00
Marketing, cutting costs, time management, and replacing your loses without cutting into your production. Correct me if I missed anything.
> Larry Connor once said (he was quoting someone) "every one that
> makes $1000 in beekeeping, can make $2000 doing almost anything else".
Hey, now that's funny - Dr. Larry was quoting me with that.
Money isn't the reason for being a beekeeper. If you want to get "rich",
get out of all agriculture as quickly as possible.
But one is richer when one has friends, and I have many friends as a
result of keeping bees. Over and over these friends have proven just
what good friends they are, sometimes in very over-the-top ways.
If you look around and talk to sideliners, the minimum number of hives
that one can expect to "pay bills" with would be somewhere in the
400-500 hive range, assuming a vertically integrated operation where
one sold the bulk of one's honey bottled and labeled, perhaps in private label deals, perhaps under one's own brand. One would do one or two
pollination placements with roughly half the hives every spring, and
one would perhaps get into some value-added work, such as comb
honey, fresh pollen, or wax products.
I did OK, but I set up a line of retail outlets that sold to tourists, and
could thereby command a much higher price per pound. I also had
a low-cost pollination scheme, where transportation was provided
by the growers, and my payment was in the form of a percentage of
the crop. Hard to compare to the typical situation on multiple levels.
> makes $1000 in beekeeping, can make $2000 doing almost anything else".
Hey, now that's funny - Dr. Larry was quoting me with that.
Money isn't the reason for being a beekeeper. If you want to get "rich",
get out of all agriculture as quickly as possible.
But one is richer when one has friends, and I have many friends as a
result of keeping bees. Over and over these friends have proven just
what good friends they are, sometimes in very over-the-top ways.
If you look around and talk to sideliners, the minimum number of hives
that one can expect to "pay bills" with would be somewhere in the
400-500 hive range, assuming a vertically integrated operation where
one sold the bulk of one's honey bottled and labeled, perhaps in private label deals, perhaps under one's own brand. One would do one or two
pollination placements with roughly half the hives every spring, and
one would perhaps get into some value-added work, such as comb
honey, fresh pollen, or wax products.
I did OK, but I set up a line of retail outlets that sold to tourists, and
could thereby command a much higher price per pound. I also had
a low-cost pollination scheme, where transportation was provided
by the growers, and my payment was in the form of a percentage of
the crop. Hard to compare to the typical situation on multiple levels.
Mikey, 300-400 hives would probably make you about 20,000 a year after expenses, and before tax. You could take care of them working about 25-30 hours a week average through the spring and summer, if you are well orginized, plan ahead, and work efficiently. One man can realisticly take care of 500 hives, if he is good shape. If moving hives, he will occasionally need to hire someone to help, although I have moved full hives without help before.
Keep in mind, you will not get rich from this. The best you can hope for is to make a confortable living. The rich guys are Dadant, Mann Lake, Subee, etc. When you can pay other beekeepers a dollar per pound, then bottle and package 200,000lbs a day, and sell it to the large chain stores, you can get rich. But most of those businesses have been around almost a hundred years.
I also plan to grow into a commercial operation, but I don't plan to make a living until I pass 1000 hives, and have a good market carved out. I'm hoping that most of my income will be from nucs.
Keep in mind, you will not get rich from this. The best you can hope for is to make a confortable living. The rich guys are Dadant, Mann Lake, Subee, etc. When you can pay other beekeepers a dollar per pound, then bottle and package 200,000lbs a day, and sell it to the large chain stores, you can get rich. But most of those businesses have been around almost a hundred years.
I also plan to grow into a commercial operation, but I don't plan to make a living until I pass 1000 hives, and have a good market carved out. I'm hoping that most of my income will be from nucs.
IndianaHoney has "anayize [d] this" pretty completly/succinctly; a well thought out response. But for me, Jim Fischer said it best with, "Money isn't the reason for being a beekeeper".
It has been said a few, or even many times [What Color is Your Parachute] but FIND what you love to do and riches will be bestowed upon you beyond your wildest dreams, lol. I know I am exaggerating a bit but it is true.
"But one is richer when one has friends, and I have many friends a result of keeping bees". - J. Fischer.
It has been said a few, or even many times [What Color is Your Parachute] but FIND what you love to do and riches will be bestowed upon you beyond your wildest dreams, lol. I know I am exaggerating a bit but it is true.
"But one is richer when one has friends, and I have many friends a result of keeping bees". - J. Fischer.
I recall an old Steve Martin routine "Here's how to become a multi-millionaire. First, get your hands on a few million bucks..."
Ours a sideline/hobby at this moment in time and we're in a growing stage so any cash gets reinvested into equipment and livestock. But I have to agree on one thing- avoid packer sales if you can. We sell honey retail at farmer markets, a few spots on retailer's shelves, country produce markets, word of mouth, etc. Not one drop goes to packers (so far). Diversification is the only way to see any reasonable money. Honey in various forms- gift packs, straws, etc. Then those products of the hive other than honey such as wax, lip balm and so on.
Ours a sideline/hobby at this moment in time and we're in a growing stage so any cash gets reinvested into equipment and livestock. But I have to agree on one thing- avoid packer sales if you can. We sell honey retail at farmer markets, a few spots on retailer's shelves, country produce markets, word of mouth, etc. Not one drop goes to packers (so far). Diversification is the only way to see any reasonable money. Honey in various forms- gift packs, straws, etc. Then those products of the hive other than honey such as wax, lip balm and so on.
My uncle raised 5 girls and put them through college with 2000 hives. Beekeepers are the worst poor mouthers in the world. Its probably true you can make more money , doing something else.....al thinks being equal. I think anyone whos in the buiness, isn't in the bee buiness to get rich. There are several better reasons to spend a life time with the ladies.
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