Bee keeping- can you make a profit?

[blackbrood]

I can well remember seeing fellow members loading up cars with boxes upon boxes of jars at the Aberdeen Association jar depot.

"Had a good year?"

"Nah it's been afa poor..." Aye right....

PH

roflmao

 

[Black Comb]

roflmao

is that Yarskshire for I agree?

 

[hedgerow pete]

beekeeping is one of the few hobbies where you can easily trun your hobby into a paying intrest, certainly enough to cover your costs.

the biggets issue is to work out how much it has to produce and then devid that by the hives needed.

I would suggest that you try these figures first and then as many do alter the prices to suit your markets

HONEY,
up side,
average crop of standard honey from a hive can be between 10kg to over 100kg but estimate that you could get on average say 15kg or 30 jars , cost of jar is say 100p with lid and label, you sell the honey for £4.50. posible earnings of £3.50 per jar times 30 jars equals £105 per hive.

down side, costs do not include running costs over heads and equipment pay backs and labour.

you can if your lucky find a good selling point and sell a jar for £10 each and then again you could sell your honey for £3 so lots of posible alterations in money

WAX,
upside,
on ebay wax sells on average for £10 to £14 per kilo depending on its shape and form and quality, an average crop of wax from a hive is about 2 kilos with trimmings through out the year and cappings, so another possible £20 here

down side again we are still missing labour and over heads

NUCS.
upside,
like your self most ppeople will happily pay from £125 to £175 per five frame nuc, a full hive of bees can easily be split into ten with 9 new queens you have a possible earner of £1250 per hive which it is in theary posible to do twice in a year, you say you have a few hives so between the lot it is possible to do 20 nucs twice in the year again a possible of 40 nucs at £125 each will give us a earning of £5,000 in cash a tax free income

down side
for me for every ten queens i have produced i have lost another ten and as for me last year one slip in the weather and you will end up with absolutly nothing, also for every ten queens i have i will end up with say five that are naff, poor, angry, evil, satanic, and will just swarm off else where.

hope that helps.

as for making to sell equipment there are to many other trades men and others who can easily out produce and out quality my humble wood butcher skills so i would not even bother to sell item i have cobbled together as there is no profit in it

 

[Black Comb]

I think Hp's post sums it up very well.

Looking at hive prices recently (cedar) it seems a few new suppliers around and prices are competitive esp. for nationals.

I would be interested in what others think of Pete's figures on ratio of viable nucs/hives/p.a.

 

[Poly Hive]

I think the nuc figures are not quite right.

Yes you can split a colony into ten and sell it. However you cannot sell the same colony twice in a season as you err... sold it.

If you are a bit more realistic, and say you want to produce two nucs off each production colony esp if you have a June gap and are gearing up for Heather work then yes it is more than possible.

PH

 

[Black Comb]

So running nats on double brood box I will have enough brood and bees to make 2 nucs and then stuff the bottom box for the heather?

(I would like to do this on langs but newbies want national nucs)

 

[BKF Admin]

I think HP's estimate of 15kg of honey per hive is very good.

Its so easy to talk about 40-50kg per hive only to find that over time a bad year would wipe you out if you realy on such a big average.

I would of said 15kg per hive per year as well.

PeterS are you not tempted to go with just the one hive type next year ?
I have played with both types in the past and giving a frame of brood ect can be a real pain at times when running two setups.

 

[Poly Hive]

There is a market for Langstroth too. (I hope there is having invested in several Lang nuc boxes)

The classic 10 year average is given in various books as 40lbs for the UK. Divide that by umm sucks pencil, 2.2 and you get...18.18kg. So between 15 and 20.

I have to be honest here and say I have never ever done that poorly in a season when I was running purely for liquid honey.I am not saying it cannot happen but my average was more like 60lbs a colony.

Now I am more than happy to take of a super on average of comb. More of course is always nice...LOL

PH

 

[RoofTops]

To get back to the orginal question, I suggest it is not a matter of how many, but how you get there. I would suggest build up your stocks from what you have now, that way your experience and knowledge will grow at a sensible rate. It will also allow you to find out where and how best you can sell your honey, wax, bees, hives etc. By the time the second generation takes over you should be up to several hundred hives and they could end up running over a thousand. That is how the big beefarmers started with the odd exception (I know only one) who had the capital go out and buy a thousand hives from the outset.

 

[oliver90owner]

odd exception

Rooftops is quite close to the mark. Gradual, business-financed expansion.

Who in their right mind would go out and buy in 1000 hives/colonies, in the present environment, without taking a huge risk of it going pear shaped in the near future?

Small hive beetle and hornets should be enough to set alarm bells ringing for most. Eggs and baskets comes to mind. 'Diversity' is the route to go, these days, IMO.

Regards, RAB

 

[tonybloke]

is that Yarskshire for I agree?

roflmao = rolling on floor laughing my arse off

 

[victor meldrew]

Perhaps profitable at these prices WOW!!

http://www.lancashirehoney.com/

John Wilkinson

 

[hedgerow pete]

the biggest problems that most beeks hit when they try to turn a profit is these, i know i have hit every single one several times over.

figures or sales and production are out. the first time i tried to raise a profit i found that my hives did not produce 100lb of honey every year without fail and secondly no one wanted to buy honey near me for £5 a lb ( 1983)

last year due to work and weather my breeding programe of 30 new queens and 20 new nucs, ended up as NO NEW QUEENS AND NO NEW NUCS.

costs of equipments.

this time last year i had to be brought out by a friend from a commercial bee breeding bussiness honey set up , basicly i was helping to set up a farm over the 600 hives mark over three years

but the biggest thing was i had 12 weeks off for xmas last year due to no work and ill health then i was to also buy my third of 150 brood hive and super frames ( roughly 8,000 frames) and each one costing roughly a quid with wood and wax so whilst being unemployed and skint i was to also pay out £2,500 on bees.

and lastly no matter what book or internet page you have read , no matter how exact your planning is and no matter how good you are the bees will always do something completly unplanned and unexspected.

and one last point how fit are you ..............REALY!!

 

[mbc]

A good way to ensure your hobby/enterprise makes a profit is to limit expenditure to a 'bee fund' kept for the purpose and only ever put revenue from the bees into the bee fund. If youve started off cheap with second hand boxes and swarms then this system lets you pay back the initial outlay quickly and from then on only allows you to expand holistically as your prowess and success improve

 

[mbc]

Looking back, I realise this wasnt quite how it worked as, in the chase for numbers I ended up with far more bees than supers to service them and ended up racking up a bit of debt, beyond the bee funds capacity, buying emergency super space and taking time off work to build all those supers and frames.
Conveniently, I can no longer remember whether this debt was ever payed off by the 'bee fund' .

 

[MJBee]

All my hunny munny goes into a cash box and is used to pay for items bought locally. The problem is that 95% is bought on t'internet using a credit card and debited a/c is rarely (never) reimbursed

 

[Springer]

If more business operated as mbc states instead of going out and getting hocked up at a bank then we would live in better world i believe.
Is this "getting a loan" way go doing business something new to recent years ?
I can never understand why the Government needs a debt, I thought good housekeeping was living within your means, we could do away with the big bankers then
Remember Mr. Micorber

 

[Saradan]

Perhaps profitable at these prices WOW!!

http://www.lancashirehoney.com/

John Wilkinson

Wow, good luck to him. Presumably he must be selling it at these prices?

 

[oliver90owner]

Presumably he must be selling it at these prices?

Maybe ask on the forum? Not so many called Andy and keeps bees in Preston, so quite likely a forum member.

Regards, RAB

 

[drstitson]

adopt a hive

i can't believe the price they're charging for 1 year full adoption (£350).

For that, aside from the usual adoption stuff (newsletter etc) is 1lb of "your" honey.

Makes the £9-10 jars seem very reasonable.