How to Start a Beekeeping Business
Beekeeping is one of the most profitable business activities in our society today; however, the negative aspect is how people see bees as dangerous or harmful insects. To a fair degree, the assertion might be right, but one thing that needs to inspire us to enter into this business should be that people are still in this business and regularly make massive profits without being killed by bees. So, your case shouldn’t be an exception.
If you are among the many who are thinking of joining the beekeeping industry, read on. We’ll describe the fundamentals of beekeeping to you as a beginner, whether you’re a backyard beekeeper, a homesteader, a hobby farmer, or a small farmer looking to start growing and selling honey and other bee products. It’s an easy investment for people of a severe mind.
Seven Factors to Consider before starting a Bee Keeping Business
Every business in the world has its pros and cons regarding the theory of success in any legitimate brand. Beekeeping is not extraordinary, there are several things to consider before embarking on your Bee Keeping expedition, so before you dive in, consider whether keeping bees is ideal for you.
- Business Orientation
As has rightly been said, education is power; your knowledge must develop beyond the extent of its comprehension. There are many beekeeping books, and learning everything you can about these cute little insects will help you get your hives off to the right foot. Learn as much as you can so that you’ll be ready to go and know how to handle your bees when your bees arrive.
The first consideration is to ensure that there are plenty of flowering plants and trees in the region and ensure that the water supply is accessible to the Bee Hives.
Beehives must be placed far from sprayed pesticides. They must also be shielded from strong winds and direct sunlight by putting them under trees or artificial shades.
Hives must be put away from human activity to prevent them from continually being stung by bees.
- Find out how to generate Good Income With Bee Venture.
Strategically, you can make a decent income from any venture only if you have work plans before you start.
Before you hop in and start buying supplies, let’s take a step back to see just how the hive works and what the bees do. Bees build nests in nature, fly to flowers, collect nectar, and then bring the nectar back to the hive and comb, slowly becoming honey. This is how to be a good businessman.
No one is an island of their own, don’t forget that people were in this business before you came, you certainly need their experience; how good they are and why they have failed. Some specifics can be unique to your local area in beekeeping.
And the concept of beekeeping means that if you have good local support to draw on, you’ll be the most successful: for example, having someone come to inspect your hive or help you find your queen if needed. Get out there and find out about the local beekeeping association. Attend local meetings. Some organizations provide mentors who can be invaluable in guiding you throughout your first phase.
- Learn How you can set up your Bee Hive
You need an experienced hive engineer to set up your farm for you. In the wild, bees construct their hive, typically in a hollow tree trunk or other sheltered location, although it can be anywhere.
As a beekeeper in the backyard, you can have a human-made hive for your bees so that you can help sustain the colony and quickly harvest the honey.
There are a few different options for the backyard or the larger beekeeper. Long troth and top-bar hives are the most commonly found forms.
The hive is a place to house the bees. It can be constructed from a range of materials. The hives help the bees to build their nests so that they can be handled easily. It makes the bees travel quickly.
All the bees want is a place big enough for the entire colony, supplies, and protection from the weather and the attackers. Get your hives from the right source, understand the hives’ parts, and how and when to use them properly.
It is necessary to have adequate boxes known as ‘supers’ with frames available to place on your hives during nectar flow. If you have 1,000 hives, you’ll need at least 2,000 extra supers. To start with, it’s okay to go for 500-2,000 Hives and take advantage of the opportunity.
- Understand the Risks Involved
There are unique risks for every business across the globe. You ought to know each move, the terms and conditions of any business operation before you start. Tasks What’s involved in taking care of your bees? Like gardening, beekeeping tasks are best divided by season. The perfect time to start your hive is in the spring so that the colony you begin with has time to build up, lay brood (baby bees), increase in size, and stock honey before the winter starts.
- Gather Your Bee Keeping Supply
What do you need to start beekeeping? Learn about the necessary resources and what you can do without it. Remember: start small, so that you can make changes if you change your mind later. Some of the supplies are best bought in person, while others can be ordered online.
- Place order for your honey Bees
When you’ve collected your supplies and acquired a lot of beekeeping experience, it’s time to order your bees! You are likely to order the “package bees” and the queen, or the “nuc colony.” However, the colony is a more developed group of bees with a queen who has already begun to lay brood between the two. If you’re able to get one, it will give your hive a head start.
How Much Money Do You Require To Start a Bee Keeping Business?
- For The The Hive
We shall not be considering costing for the expected body and super count for the first year for the hive. Hence, we are assuming two deep hive bodies and three western honey supers per hive.
For frames, we recommend using wooden frames with a wax-coated plastic foundation.
You will require two deep bodies, three western honey supers, 40 deep frames and foundation sheets, 60 western frames and foundation sheets, a screened bottom board, a telescoping lid, and an inner cover for each hive.
The cost for this setup is usually anything that ranges between $200 and $300 per hive. Nevertheless, it could be different in your region.
Total Hive Cost: $400-$600
- The Bees
Getting bees is pretty straight forward. You can readily get bee packages with a mated queen from any number of apiary supply stores or other beekeepers. Many beekeeping associations do large group orders of bee packages as well.
A bee package is a simple box that has two screened sides, a feeder can, and a small cage to keep the queen segregated from the bees.
Packages come in 2, 3, and 4-pound sizes. The most commonly used package size is a 3 pound package, and you can use that as your basis. Packages run between $80 and $100 each for a 3-pound package.
Total Bee Package Cost: $160 – $200
- Tools and Clothing
Since you are just getting started with beekeeping, you need to pick up tools and protective clothing. You would require a hive tool, a bee brush, a smoker, a feeder for each hive, and gloves.
Protective clothing options are somewhat wide open. You can get a jacket or a full suit, or even just a veil. For purposes of this post, we’re going to get a jacket and a veil.
All told this stuff will cost you between $140 and $200
Total Tools and Clothes Cost: $140 – $200
- Total First Year Start-up Costs
Based on this math, it looks like getting started for the first year is going to cost you between $700 and $1000. This is Not cheap by any account. However, it is doable.
To offset some of this cost, you can try to sell the honey your bees make. A hive in this area makes anywhere from 0 to 130lbs of excess honey a year, with the average amount looking like around 50-90 lbs.
Local raw honey goes for about $11-$13 a pound, so the average hive should, in theory, generate anywhere from $550 to $1170, assuming you sell it all and don’t keep it.
How to Harvest the honey
Once you know it’s time for honey to be harvested, understand that not much can hold you back. Before you head out to the beehives and start peeling back the hive’s tops, it is vital to observe some safety precautions and know your action plan.
First, put on bee-enhanced protection armor — especially if you’re a beginner. At the very least, you must wear elbow-length gloves and a veiled hat for farming. It would be best if you also considered wearing bee-proof overalls. Although it’s a little warm, this clothing protects you and your bees from a very uncomfortable near encounter.
Step One: Open Office: Using a smoker, approach the beehive from behind and blow the smoke across the hive entrance. Remove the top and smoke the opening to get the bees down to the hive. Next, cut the inside of the cover. You may need to use a mini-crowbar-style hive tool to remove the inside cover, as bees prefer to seal it with Propolis, a resin-like substance extracted from tree buds and bark when they pollinate.
Step Two: Remove Bees From The Hive: Whether you plan to remove a full super or just a frame, you’ll need to remove any lingering bees from this area. Several mechanical and chemical methods of removing bees from your supers range from a simple, broad, silky “bee brush” to gas- and electric-powered blowers to bee escape.
You can then pull the bee-free frames out and set them aside in a lidded, empty super until you’re ready to take your honey-laden frames inside for extraction.
Step Three: Uncap the Honey: Once inside, uncap the wax-sealed honeycomb using an uncapping knife, fork, or scratcher on both sides of the frame.
Step Four: Extract the Honey: Place the frame into a honey extractor—these come in hand-cranked and electric versions—and spin the frames, forcing the honey to the drum walls where they drip to the bottom. The extractor’s drum should have a spigot for releasing the honey.
Step Five: Filter and Bottle Your Honey: Strain the honey through a filter or several cheesecloth layers to remove any stray bits of wax or other debris. At this point, your honey is ready to bottle. Use clean, sterilized bottles to avoid contaminating your honey product.
Where to sell your honey
The filtering of your liquid honey should be considered a mandatory step. Though honey never spoils, it does not sell partly granulated honey and filtered bottled honey.
Be aware that while processing jars of honey at temperatures over 160 degrees, it removes granulation and smoothes the honey, it also depletes natural enzymes.
While honey is a natural food, bees are wild creatures, and beekeepers have little control over their feeding habits.
Consider your operating expenses when you set a price tag for your honey. For example, toll-free telephone numbers, advertising, or the cost of setting up a website should be taken into account.
Please be prepared to complete the USDA-approved Transaction Report (TR) form. This is required under U.S. federal law for all ‘first-time honey handlers.’
Make sure you comply with all labeling requirements. To that end, familiarize yourself with labeling rules and regulations and definitions.
If you’ve been dabbling with your honey to fill your pantry or gift to friends and family, now may be the time to take your honey business to a whole different level. There’s a lot you can do with honey, beeswax, and just a little creative thinking. Make sure you have enough honey produced to keep your honey bottles in stock and ready to get sell-then prepared to turn your hobby into a more successful business.
Making Money From Beekeeping
The world needs some bees. Regrettably, man hasn’t been so nice to the world often. So, the bees need us to reverse some of the harm that we have done already.
If we had been a little less reckless, they would probably not need us, however now they do. The honey bee’s plight has drawn not only recreational hobbyists but also those who collect bees for profit.
Some beekeepers are considering a middle ground and reaching for both. These cases raise the question: is beekeeping possible to make money?
The short answer is yes, and beekeeping for profit goes far further than just selling your honey.
There are also many ways to make money from beekeeping that most modern and for-profit beekeepers are unaware of.
We always talk about what we can do for the bees, now let’s see what they can do for us.
Here are the top 5 ways that beekeeping can help you make money:
- The Sales of Bee Products
The first way to make a little cash is by selling what bees make naturally:
- Honey: Honey is probably the first thing that pops up in your mind when you first hear beekeeping. The cost of production is meager, just enough to support labor and packaging. In this era of health consciousness, Raw honey is incredibly popular.
Without heat, honey will retain the enzymes that give you additional health benefits. Most industrial honey is pasteurized to make packaging simpler, and to last longer in its liquid state.
Heating it above 104 degrees, unfortunately, destroys the enzymes which give honey its unique nutrient benefit.
Honey flavor differs depending on the nectar source available. You can find yourself in possession of premium honey because blooms in your area are different from those found anywhere else.
Suppose you have an orchard or specialize in berry production, such as strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries. In that case, your honey will have a completely different flavor than that of a keeper who relies on wildflowers.
- Pollen: Pollen is the bee’s primary protein source, which also serves for us as a dietary supplement. It has a higher market value than honey, since not all foragers are given a pollen task. Pollen comes only in limited quantities. Responsible pollen collection requires that you only set up pollen traps for a few hours a day and do so for a few days a week, not for the whole.
This is because the bees require pollen to raise the family’s brood, the infants. If you take too much pollen, you threaten the brood’s well-being.
- Propolis: Bees also know how to clean home, and are outstanding in their renovation expertise. All the cracks are sealed, and the hive is disinfected with Propolis. Propolis like this one is a sticky material, extracted from the secretions of different trees and plants.
Being the hive disinfectant, Propolis is suitable for medicinal use. What you need to get is a pit on Propolis. The quantities are small, but you’ll get a decent output rate with a concrete hive.
- Wax: This one coincides with honey but only makes financial sense in bulk. If you use an extractor to collect the honey, then the honeycomb gets recycled, and you wind up with very minute quantities of wax.
If you’re dealing with hundreds or thousands of hives, nevertheless, then you can harvest the honey and take out the rendering comb. Wax is pretty small, so you’ll need huge numbers to make this venture worth it.
- The Sales of Pollinator Services
Think healthy eating, and terms like omega 3 start flying around. Once those omegas get going, it points in the direction of nuts. In the land of nuts, one of the wealthiest inhabitants is the almond.
Apart from the nut itself, which is both delicious and nutritious, we have many other products such as milk and oils. Even though nuts do grow on trees, it’s not as simple as it sounds. Almonds rely 100% on cross-pollination for production.
- The Sales Of Bees Equipment
Beekeepers, or beeks as they are often referred to, are forms of nature and do not mind their dirty hands. That doesn’t mean we’re all comfortable with a drill and a saw. Companies such as Dadant have also been supplying bee equipment for decades. Excluding the critical components of the hive, there are other things that you might sell.
If you build a reputation and quality brand, then you are going to be in business. Research into the market is easy to conduct.
It would be best if you started at the local association of beekeepers, and they are usually the first stop for their members when searching for a supplier or service provider.
- The Sale of Advisory Services
Every day Bee Keepers are born. Well, maybe they aren’t, but the bee’s plight has spread far and wide, and more people answer the call.
The biggest issue is that the first year of beekeeping is fraught with overload or under-load of information, which typically leads to several mistakes. As a seasoned beekeeper, new beekeepers can be supplied with advisory services to help them start and develop their hives.
- Make money as a Pollinator Seed Supplier.
Beekeepers aren’t the only bee lovers. Many people have pollinator gardens that provide nectar and pollen for honey bees and other species of bees. And they have not yet got to own a hive. The honey bees probably need more people of this kind than beekeepers do.
Such seeds increase their food supply without increasing the bees’ population density, which eventually decreases food competition, meaning safer bees food. You could decide to specialize in selling pollinator seeds and seedlings for beekeepers and non-beekeepers alike. This allows more people to save the bees without worrying about putting on the hazmat suit that beekeepers are known for.
Conclusion
Starting a beekeeping business could begin as a hobby. Nevertheless, whether it’s a hobby for you or a full-time business, you have to take advantage of this space’s opportunities. Hence one place to begin is here.