NigCareers

Are you interested in starting a bee farming business? If YES, here is a comprehensive guide to starting a bee farm. Bee farming is an activity that is growing in terms of market and that can be a good bet for those who have affinity with activities related to nature.

The creation of bee farm for the purpose of extracting honey, propolis, royal jelly etc. can become a very profitable business. Understanding the steps to start your creation is crucial for anyone looking to invest in this business.

Setting up a bee farm is a profitable and promising means of business. That’s because honey, propolis and especially royal jelly, reach a high value in the consumer market. In addition, with the healthier standard of living, the demand for products from bees grows year by year

In Summary:

1. Profile of a Bee Farmer
2. What are the Roles of the Bee Farmer?
3. Why Bee Farming?
4. How do Bee Farms Work?
5. How to Start
6. Types of Bees
7. Bee products
8. Success Tips
9. Conclusion

Profile of a Bee Farmer

To exercise the profession of a bee farmer, it is strongly advised to have certain qualities. In particular, you must:

• Love bees and not be afraid of them;
• Enjoy nature and outdoor work, with the disadvantage of being exposed to the weather;
• Be patient and persistent because the fruits of your labor can take time and the first year of exercise is not always enough to see the results of your efforts;
• Be aware of the difficulty of the job because you are dealing with fragile insects, sensitive to their environment and climate, whose high mortality rate has an impact on your activity (absence of honey, need to invest in new colonies, etc.).

In addition, it is essential to have certain professional skills in the bee farming business.

What are the Roles of the Bee Farmer?

To become a professional bee farmer, you will have to make certain choices regarding:

• The species of bees you will breed.
• The choice of the suitable location for the hives.
• The equipment to buy.
• Maintenance of the equipment necessary for the operation of bees and of materials useful for the honey industry.
• The products from the hive that you intend to sell: honey, royal jelly, pollen, propolis, wax, etc.
• Raising bees while ensuring their protection against predators and diseases.
• Monitoring of hives.
• Control of the health status of the colonies.
• The honey harvest and its processing.
• The production of a new colony with queens and bees.

Why Bee Farming?

There are many business opportunities in the commercial agriculture industry, bee farming business is one of them.

Before breeding insects, you need to clearly answer yourself the question of what opportunities and initial basic resources you have and what kind of profit you would like to get as soon as possible after the start of breeding bees.

Bees are completely independent. They lead their natural way of life, which does not intersect with human life. Bees do not need to be fed in the morning and evening by the hour, do not need to be treated (only treated for varroatosis), and, most importantly, do not kill.

Bees farming will bring a lot of different products. Having collected honey, wax or propolis, you will already have a positive trend in the business, and if you are lucky, then arrange sales of bee venom, which is so necessary in pharmaceutical companies.

Starting bee farming from scratch is too difficult, but there are exceptions.

For an experienced person, bee breeding as a business can pay off in a season or even start to make a profit, but a beginner can’t achieve such results in the first season. Therefore, if you are already an experienced bee farmer, then do not be afraid to become an independent bee farmer, you will succeed.

When answering the question about profit, it is worth noting that the bee farming season averages six months. That is, the bee farm will bear fruit within six months, but the profit from it should be counted on for a year. If you want the bee farm to become the only place to earn income for you, then do not forget about the short duration of the bee farming season.

So if you are serious about starting your own honey and beekeeping business, I believe that reading this article will further boost your interest. You can start your bee farming business from a small town and if you are consistent and creative, it won’t be long before your brand is recognized nationally.

How do Bee Farms Work?

Bee farms raise bees. They collect and harvest honey, sell bees, royal jelly, beeswax, propolis, pollen, bee venom and other bee products. Most bee farmers keep hives for honey, but bees also produce other useful products. Beeswax from cell covers and old combs is used for high quality candles, pharmaceuticals, lotions and friction reducing waxes for skis and surfboards. In addition to honey, several other bee products are sources of food for humans. The litter of bees (young bees housed in the comb of a hive) is consumed as a form of meat in many non-European countries.

Food additives for humans and pets are made from pollen collected from bees and royal jelly, which bees produce as food for their larvae. Various bee products are also used as medicines. Since the 90’s, researchers have been improving extraction techniques to collect bee venom, because bee stings can relieve symptoms of arthritis, rheumatism and other diseases. Propolis, a vegetable glue that bees use to maintain the comb, is used in cosmetics and healing creams and can have antibiotic or anesthetic properties. Propolis was previously an ingredient in some varnish, including the varnish on Stradivarius violins.

How to Start

1. Market Research

Before you start a business, you should collect all the information about bee farming in your region. A lot of useful information will be provided by local unions of bee farmers. Where to buy equipment and beehives, where and at what price the best bee colonies are sold, what is the price of honey and bee farming products? This will help to calculate the approximate amount of the initial investment.

2. Target Market

If you decide to start your own bee farm business today, one of the main challenges you are likely to face is the presence of well-established bee farm business in your target market location. The only way to avoid this challenge is to find your own target market; Focus on homes, individuals, small restaurants, and hotels that need a constant supply of products from bee farms.

3. Choose your Niche

Finding niches is easy, but most profitable people already have a lot of people marketing them. Not that this is bad, as it shows that it is a healthy market and that there is money to be made.

However, if you want to compete, you need to have a unique angle or find your own sub-niche to make you stand out. Here are some niches in the beekeeping business:

• Bee production
• Beeswax production
• Queen Bee Production
• Bee production
• Propolis production
• Bee Pollen Collection
• Sale of live bees
• Sale of other products related to bees.
• Pollination services

4. Ideal Location

This is a very important point! It is necessary to choose well the place where you will set up the bee farming because this directly influences the success or failure of the business. The ideal is to choose a rural area – since creating a bee farm close to homes can cause accidents.

It is also necessary to avoid places close to sugar, cane industries because this can cause the honey to lose its quality. The hives need to be close to fruit trees, as in the case of banana, orange and eucalyptus trees.

It is also important that they are close to water sources. Another important thing about location is that it is at least 30 meters away from areas with a lot of noise and it must be protected from animals and wind.

5. Start-Up Capital

Starting a bee farming business can be profitable, especially if you choose to start on a small scale. Ensuring a standard and well-positioned beehive are part of what will consume a large part of the initial capital. If you choose to start the business on a large scale, you will need to look for a fund to finance the business, because it is expensive to start a standard large-scale bee farming business.

Without a doubt, when it comes to financing a business, one of the first things you should consider is having a good business plan. If you have a good and workable business plan document, you may not have to work hard before convincing your bank, investors and friends to invest in your business.

• 
  
  
  

Here are some of the options that you can explore

• Raising money with personal savings and selling personal stocks
• Raising money from business partners
• Proposing your business idea and requesting business subsidies and initial funding from donor organizations and angel investors
• Gentle source of loans from family and friends

Read Also: Funding Options for Small Businesses

6. Equipment

The equipment are important because it is with which you will have to work. So you have to choose it carefully, going to a bee farming shop and trying it, especially the suit, mask and gloves. Buy all new things, especially the hives, honeycombs and frames.

Here’s what you need:

Bee farmer suit (pants and shirt with mask). My advice is to take a loosely fit, it is more comfortable, and you can often do operations in the bee farm using the jeans you wear at the moment.

Buy leather gloves, then you will understand that it is better to work with nitrile ones, but at the beginning they give a greater feeling of protection, helping you to concentrate better.

7. Business Plan

Once all of the previous steps have been completed, you can then embark on the preparation of the business plan, an essential document for any business creation.

In fact, the business plan is a kind of summary of your professional project which includes market research, commercial positioning, choice of location, legal status, and of course the financial budget.

Simply put, a bee farming business plan has two parts:

• A written part used to present the project and highlight its strengths
• A quantified part, which is the financial budget, used to highlight the need for financing and the profitability potential of your business

This document will allow you to further explore your project and check its financial feasibility. It is also through this business plan that you will communicate to the banks when seeking financing.

Suffice to say that a business plan must be easy and pleasant to read, give the key information of your bee breeding business, and give enough details without drowning the reader.

Read Also: 22 Reasons for Small Business failure and How to Avoid Them

8. Legalities

The creation of any new business involves legalities. When starting a bee farming business, consider the following:

• Tax obligations – If necessary, hire an accountant.
• License to start a bee farming business.
• Registration – Depending on the type of business you wish to create, registration may be different. If, for example, you establish yourself as an individual operator, you will have to take into account your annual turnover in terms of VAT and your sales and expenditure statements.

9. Find Customers

Every bee farming business needs customers, and we’ll provide you with tips to help you find yours – whether you want one or 100!

While you may want to acquire as many new customers as possible at the outset, it is likely that over time, the focus will be more on retaining customers in the long term, as it can be difficult to continually replace them.

That said, it’s also important to know when to let a customer go.

How can your bee farming business find customers?

1. Networking

One of the most important ways to find clients and market your business is through networking.

Networking is about building connections and delivering value – note that this is not necessarily an immediate source of income. Instead, think of it like this: Connections create customers.

2. References

Once you have customers to work with, use them to expand your customer base even more.

Being referred by another company could increase your business chances of finding more customers to work with, as this helps build trust.

3. Location

The location where you are based also says a lot about your business. Again, it’s all part of your brand, so choose your business location carefully, because it can say a lot about your business.

Finding the right premises for your business is not only having enough space to work, it is also showing potential customers – and competitors – that your business is a serious competitor.

How to retain the customers

Once your business is better established, you will need to make sure that your customers stay with you and that they are not influenced by what other competitors are offering. Here are a few tips:

• Make sure that everything your business does is customer-focused.
• Treat your customers like they’re the boss
• Focus on measuring customer satisfaction
• Create customer loyalty to increase customer retention
• Set customer expectations in advance
• Learn how to research your customers the right way
• Email is the best way to increase customer retention
• Take advantage of social media to track and monitor customer satisfaction, so you can keep your customers happy
• Keep reports and document work
• Stay up to date with bee farming news
• Creative approach to work

Although it can be fairly easy to manage your time (both for acquiring new customers and maintaining existing accounts) in the early stages, as your business grows and grows, you may need to consider additional tools.

Read Also: Fish Farming Business, a Lucrative Small Business Idea

10. Promote your Bee Farming Business

Promoting a business is essential, but for a bee farming business, the question becomes even more interesting: how to promote a bee farming business?

Even if people expect higher standards (this is your business area of expertise, after all), don’t worry – see it as a creative challenge instead. Here are some of the main ways to promote your business:

• Website

First of all, you need to have a professional and well-designed website. This is not negotiable for a bee farming business – customers and others interested in your business should be able to find your business online and see a site that best reflects what you are doing.

However, it does not have to be expensive. At first, you can use a website builder to quickly and easily create a basic website, without the need for a lot of technical skills.

After a while, you can consider hiring a professional website designer to create a website with custom design and increased functions.

• Social media

In addition to your site, your business will need to be on social media to contribute to your overall online presence. Although there are a number of platforms, focus your efforts on connecting with your target market. It’s about knowing what networks they’re using and sharing their content. You can use social media to promote your business, but also to engage and find customers.

In general, Facebook and Instagram are the main networks to use.

The best advertisement for your products will be photos from the bee farm and satisfied customer reviews. Given the fact that the target audience on social media differs from market visitors, we recommend that you “pack” the goods in a quality manner. Moreover, we are talking not only about beautiful packaging of products, but also in its competent presentation and positioning, high-quality photographs. For example, gift sets (liquid honey, honeycombs, bee bread), stylishly decorated for the holidays, are now enjoying success on the Web.

Some go further and offer large corporate customers sweet sets with their company logos – for gifts to employees and business partners.

It’s a way for people to see what’s going on in your business and keep you up to date on what matters most to your customers.

• Promotional material

Even if you run a bee farming business, don’t forget the promotional material on paper. It can be as simple as creating business cards for yourself.

Likewise, you might consider creating brochures and other physical materials to promote your business. You could sample a range of work that you think best represents your business in a brochure to distribute as needed.

11. Connect with the Experts in your Area

Another important thing I advise you to do is to get in touch with some bee farmers in the area, to help you for a couple of years, in order to see and do the whole seasonal cycle of work in the bee farm.

Following a bee farmer is particularly useful because you immediately start to see how you work in the bee farm, how you move, what you look at and what you fear. A bee farmer works in the field, perfectly knows the territory on which he has his posts, knows the blooms and knows the problems.

But be careful: I am not saying that you should not read and study (and continue to do it for life). The two must be done simultaneously.

12. Join a Bee Farming’s Club

This gives you a huge boost in running your business because you will be surrounded by a support group who wants to see you succeed.

You will meet other bee farming business owners and learn a lot.

It will be much easier for you to improve your business strategies when you meet other bee farmers in the region. By joining a bee farmer’s club, you will have access to important information about bee farming and you will also be able to increase your knowledge of the market and the demand for your products.

Types of Bees

The most well-known types of bees are probably

· Honey bees

Queen – this is the female at the center of the hive and gives birth to the larvae that become the rest of the hive. They are tended to by the other members of the hive and stay in one spot.

Worker – usually females, too, but these tend to the queen, providing food, taking the eggs, caring for the larvae and protecting the progeny.

Drone – these are generally males and drones are the ones who fly out and search for flowers to pollinate and from which to get nectar and bring it back to the colony for use with the workers, queen and larvae.

· Bumble bees

· Mason,

· Leafcutter and

· Carpenter bees

 

Bee products

The key to a successful business is to use the bee properly. Bee farming, in addition to honey, provides many valuable products.

• Beeswax, which is the secret wax gland of honey bees. It is used in cosmetics, medicine, instrument production and many other industries.
• Bee pollen used in pharmaceutical products.
• Zabrus (folders), which are used to normalize metabolism, to strengthen the gums and as an absorber.
• Propolis, which is a product of processing fragrant substances of plants by bees. It is used for medical purposes as an anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial agent.
• Apitoxin (bee venom) is widely used for medical purposes.
• Royal jelly is a white fat-like paste that has sour burning flavors. It is used as an immunostimulating agent.

Success Tips

To successfully breed bees, several tips:

• Build the first swarm with a selected colony bought from a breeder,
• Install the first swarm during the big honey flow,
• Regularly visit the bee farm to prevent untimely swarm departures,
• Clear the surroundings of the bee farm of weeds, brush and brambles,
• Rid the bee farm of its enemies and its constraints,
• Take advantage of winter to maintain and restore the hives,
• Clean the hives meticulously.

Read Also: How to Start a Vintage Clothing Business

Conclusion

At this point, you have learned the essentials of starting a bee farming business. We looked at who is able to start one, as well as what should be included in your business plan. Plus, you’ve learned how to promote your bee farming business – whether it’s about finding customers, or just promoting your business. So what do you do with all this information? It’s time to start your bee farming business – good luck!

Agriculture

Tags: Agricultural business ideas, Business ideas