Could there be too many beekeepers?

[Dishmop]

Education of the general public is what is required.

:

You could send them a letter every day and when asked what they thought the answer would be that they cant remember any letter..

 

[victor meldrew]

Chris B

"New beekeepers are not taking significant market share but growing their own markets, family, friends and neighbours who wouldn't be consuming nearly so much honey if they didn't know their own beekeeper. My brother-in-law started last year, produced > 100lb and sold it all at work within weeks."

Yes, but how much a pound was he selling for?

Sounds like he COULD be one of the "monkey see monkey do" brigade who sell cheap and make a rod for the backs of those who are asking a fair price AND providing employment AND paying tax on the proceeds........... ??

ITLD
Ref small units not getting any money - 000s, sometimes as much as £30K is granted to LAs who are registered charities and "engaged in research" such as working out how to count bees coming in and going out of the hive and other well-deserved causes such as

studying the Waggle dance in case it's changed.

Someone seems to have missed the point of the original question "Could there be too many beekeepers ."
The number of beekeepers in the UK hasn't reached saturation point and are unlikely to do so any time soon.
We mustn't forget the pollination aspect of beekeeping . Pollination of none commercial varieties of flora!.
The average number of hives maintained by amateur (for the love of it ) beekeepers is 5 .
These are spread around in places of little interest to the commercial beekeeper with higher numbers of hives located in greater quantities but located for maximum yield or pollination fees !
There is room for all aspects of the hobby to co-exist !
Some of your comments could be construed as the uttering's of an aspiring commercial beekeeper wishing the competition to be eradicated ?
Reference to 'Tax avoidance :- . Have you really done the sum's ?
If you were to tabulate the outgoings of the average hobbyist beekeeper , including all the equipment , medication, education, insurance , bottles, jars ,lids ,labels transportation costs, feeding ( Up to June in the occasional really bad year) and a host of hidden expenses . You would find very little if indeed, any profit from a varying number of hives from 1-5 !
The pollination by honey bees in urban areas is vital for a whole system of interdependent life forms from the humblest of insect to the Birds Ect.
No, the hobbyist IS the back bone of beekeeping . Remember the age of the hobbyist commencement is 50 plus , no one lives forever ( Except one I know ,who is working hard at it )
Live and let live !!!!
VM

 

[Into the lions den]

real honey needs a sustained well funded national campaign to differentiate it from the mass market. it can be done, it has been done
with beer

Like I said, you need 50 million or 10 years or preferrably both, and the spend will be ongoing.

 

[Dishmop]

Reading between the lines I think the real concern might be.."are there too many honey producers".

 

[Into the lions den]

Reading between the lines I think the real concern might be.."are there too many honey producers".

The answer to both questions is actually pretty firmly a 'no'.

All that is wrong is that the market has got itself screwed up at a time when the economic cycle is also screwed up and demand dropped, fueled in a large part by trying to maintain the year befores artificial high price, which was already damaging the trade, albeit not really noticed at the time due to the shortage of honey. Honey supply returns to normal and its only THEN that you notice your lost clientelle.

There will be a major correction, maybe even blood on the carpets, but normality will return soon.

Beekeeping and pollination are deficient.
Honey supply is deficient.

Its just honey pitched at a price higher than the shops or end customers will pay that is in surplus.

 

[victor meldrew]

My honey prices have increased year on year since I started beekeeping but all within the sustainable band people in my area consider reasonable .
When I started keeping bees there was a crudely applied rule of thumb that a lb of honey equated with a gallon of petrol !
Not today with inflated petrol prices .
You can always feed surpus honey back to the bees of course thus reducing outlay
VM

 

[Poly Hive]

To my mind a large part of the problem is "I can to go XYZ supermarket and on the shelf honey is £X a jar and you are asking how much?" Said in tones of astonishment tinged with you are being greedy...

I have had several such conversations when I sold direct to the public, and my answer then was well taste mine and see the difference. Which worked very well.

So you can you persuade Mrs average shopping for her family on a strict budget that your extra £3 is worth while to her? And further that her family will actually eat the contents thus justifying her risk in making the purchase?

That's the dilemma we are in.

PH

 

[Chris B]

Chris B

"New beekeepers are not taking significant market share but growing their own markets, family, friends and neighbours who wouldn't be consuming nearly so much honey if they didn't know their own beekeeper. My brother-in-law started last year, produced > 100lb and sold it all at work within weeks."

Yes, but how much a pound was he selling for?

Sounds like he COULD be one of the "monkey see monkey do" brigade who sell cheap and make a rod for the backs of those who are asking a fair price AND providing employment AND paying tax on the proceeds........... ??

No it was top dollar retail price. And I think it's a common scenario. People know it's good and "when it's gone it's gone" so happy to pay well.

 

[Erichalfbee]

To my mind a large part of the problem is "I can to go XYZ supermarket and on the shelf honey is £X a jar and you are asking how much?" Said in tones of astonishment tinged with you are being greedy...

I have had several such conversations when I sold direct to the public, and my answer then was well taste mine and see the difference. Which worked very well.



PH

I sold much of my first ever crop at a Christmas fair and that is exactly what I got. Incredulity, however, turned to a different sort of astonishment given the opportunity to taste. I sold all I brought.
And I can say that there is absolutely NO English, let alone local honey to be had anywhere near where I live.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

No it was top dollar retail price. And I think it's a common scenario. People know it's good and "when it's gone it's gone" so happy to pay well.

Didn't have much of a crop this year but Lady B left some half pound jars on the desk in work (she hadn't asked me how much to charge) and people were offering her £5.00 a jar and I alrady have a growing order list for next season.
To an extent a lot of people will pay more for quality produce.

 

[REDWOOD]

sold all mine at work and people asking for more as they had never tasted honey like it £5.00 seems a fair price for quality, the only problem is I did not keep any for the honey show errrrrr

 

[psafloyd]

Great opportunity. Start a rumour of the ghost of the murdered person haunting the spot and your hives will likely be protected from vandals...

Some of this is the 'Monkey see, monkey wanna do' brigade who then clutter the market with free jars for everyone or £3:50-ish/Lb on the gate.

Off piste a little, we have had our eye on a patch to put our bees and going to approach the owner soon. Drove past today to see police ribbon, cars, guards and been told there had been a murder there (not officially confirmed but police are everywhere).

Be careful people.

 

[psafloyd]

Some of the resurgence of real ale production was many local microbreweries assisted by tax breaks from the chancellor of the time, one G Brown esq.

It can't do any harm and I think BBKA would do well to consider this and hooking up with national organisations who might be considered 'friendly', such as Garden Organic, Allotment Gardeners, Friends of the Earth, etc.

real honey needs a sustained well funded national campaign to differentiate it from the mass market. it can be done, it has been done
with beer

 

[psafloyd]

Have you tasted the ASDA honey at £1 a Lb.

It is foul - akin to axle grease.

A friend of mine told me yesterday he had run out of good honey and bought som Happy Shopper honey which he feared was ridiculously cheap.

He nearly boaked his porridge up and hasn't been able to face any since.

He said it tasted like an intensely sweet molten plastic. Vile.

 

[nelletap]

We had a fascinating talk as one of those at the Bucks County beekeping seminar day yesterday, from David Aston, BBKA chairman. It was a talk about Pollen and quite a bit related to the protein in different pollens and following on from that the levels of pollen in our hives. He has said he will send his notes to those present so excuse any inaccuracies before I have been able to check - this is somewhat away from my expertise.
He spoke about needing to think of three levels of nutrition - the colony, the adult and the brood. He explained that drones are fed a greater amount of protein from more diverse sources - so if we encourage drone brood perhaps as part of our varroa control - and then sacrifice them, a lot of effort that went into collecting pollen from them is effectively wasted from the colony. If queens are fed on a low pollen/protein diet then their ovaries are poorer. Not all pollens are of equal quality. If a colony does not have sufficient protein then there could, in marginal conditions, just be symptoms such as a queen with poorer ovaries. However, if the temperatures are too low (< 20 degrees) or too high (> 73 degrees) this low pollen state means the colony is not able to cope with such difficulties. Obviously there are other things they may not be able to cope with as well - such as disease. If there are too many colonies in an area, then I think he was saying that they would probably have to forage for pollens of lesser protein value to a greater extent meaning their ability to cope with extra stresses would be reduced.
In the case of the US and CCD, this could afford some explanation. Hives are taken to a single source area (more or less) in the sort of quantities that more or less exhaust the area's pollen and then they are moved elsewhere. This could result in the protein levels within the colony being more marginal overall and thus they are less able to cope with stress - and the handling and travelling is probably a stress in itself. low protein levels can also lead to early foraging - in other words bees going out to forage earlier than when they would otherwise do so. The pollen was sufficient to let them survive as individuals but there was a toll on the colony. Thus, if we could measure the protein health of a colony in some way we could establish whether the level was marginal - ie they could outwardly do all that was necessary but would struggle under any conditions that gave extra stress - or whether it was higher in which case they were more likely to be able to cope with some stresses.
It was all very interesting, evidenced and argued and made an impression on me though as you can probably tell, I'm still a novice trying to make sense of this fascinating topic.
Tricia

 

[Poly Hive]

I am with you on most of Tricia but not on the CCD.

Take almonds as a very good example, I remember reading the ad's in the ABJ for many years asking for tens of thousands of colonies, and that was one ad, and there were tens of them. So at that time the same conditions applied yet CCD was unknown.

PH

 

[Into the lions den]

Ref small units not getting any money - 000s, sometimes as much as £30K is granted to LAs who are registered charities and "engaged in research" such as working out how to count bees coming in and going out of the hive and other well-deserved causes such as

studying the Waggle dance in case it's changed.

Yes.....costly complete nonsense...............also someone else mentioned the millions spent on the research projects.

Well the bee establishment themselves have a lot to answer for in that. It seemed like a 'do something........do anything!' kind of situation. Our representatives, especially the BBKA, brought much pressure to bear for some 'action' on bee research.

Endless expensive research into ever less important things makes me cringe, as does the UK fascination with doing it here and somehow regarding foreign research as inferior or somehow not relevant. When I read the list of things they were going to do it was a real heart sinking moment. I could have used much of the money just as well by taking it out into the street and pouring it into the drain. A complete waste of money that would have been better spent giving every beekeeper a new broodbox and the frames and wax to fill it and making them all do a so-called (we like our UK names for standard procedures) Bailey change. Would have done far more for bee health.

End of rant about waste................

 

[keithgrimes]

what a great thread this has turned out to be.

 

[steve's bees]

Better than not selling any at all.

and it is that attitude why the beekeeper cant get the price he/she deserves for there honey

 

[Dishmop]

and it is that attitude why the beekeeper cant get the price he/she deserves for there honey

Lots of people havent got the money today to pick whatever they want off the supermarket shelves. If they want honey, they buy cheap honey. No doubt they buy cheap strawberry jam as well.
If you confront people at work to get them to buy a raffle ticket they are inclined to say OK because its less embarrasing than trying to say they dont want any because they are watching the pennies. They will probably buy your honey for the same reason, but next time you ask them you might get the answer that they havent finished the last lot.


I'd rather at least sell some of something and make some profit than sell none.

I sell stuff on ebay that I make. I dont price it at what I think I deserve.
I price it to sell. If I increased the price I wouldnt sell as much.