Keeping bees for profit...

[Busy Bee]

NO HONEY WILL LEAVE MY APIARY UNDER £6 per lb

One of the biggest failures in business is someone under selling themselves or their product..!!

Busy Bee

 

[mojomoo]

To quote hedgerow Pete "I take more out of bee keeping than golden coins and I think that makes me the richer man?"

 

[Poly Hive]

Pologies if I am wrong but the sign pic said £3-50. I am suggesting £5 as a min price.

PH

 

[drstitson]

HRP - great post

however one comment - unless one has alternative work freely available, whilst it is useful to put value on the time you put in to your bee "business", particularly when deciding what to charge for products, the 400+ hrs at £6.50 an hour is not a real loss/outgoing. it is still income for you. any income over and above real outgoings is income. if the alternative is sitting at home watching x-factor or spending money down the pub/bookies, any income is a bonus. all depends what value you put on your spare time/other hobbies.

we can all dream of working 24/7 at £100 an hour but in real world one is likely to have a 40 hr min wage job, leaving plenty spare for bee business on top.

unless of course your hands on bee work is done for you by a paid employee, in which case it is a real cost.

DOI: done my fair share of 128-132 hr weeks in past and if need be would be willing to work all hours necessary in my own enterprise to generate a liveable income.

 

[Chris Luck]

I wish I could charge £5/lb - Euros 5 for a 1kg plastic pot is the going rate in my area

He he, it's €6 a kilo here and that is the going rate, not under selling the market.

Of course we have the benefit of a better lifestyle here in France that makes up the the lower price.

Chris

 

[Nose Ma]

Poly Hive is right in all this - your bees are literally killing themselves to make a crafted "natural" artisan bespoke unique product. You are not selling the rubbish I see on supermarket shelves. You are selling something local that supports local wildlife, plant life, farmers and you. You're local. This is a premium product - treat it as such. £5 minimum is right. Don't compete on price, you can never win.

Other things you can stress - honey from the UK (or wherever you live) won't bring any nasty diseases from overseas here. Local honey has less "food miles" so it's more ecological. Honey is a foodstuff that passes way back into antiquity, we've eaten it since before we learnt to write or light a fire. That's a lot of heritage in a jar. Use it.

He he, it's €6 a kilo here and that is the going rate, not under selling the market.

Of course we have the benefit of a better lifestyle here in France that makes up the the lower price.

Chris

Do you sell all of it? If "yes" there may be some elasticity in the price, and you can charge a higher rate and still sell it all. At some point you won't sell all of it, that's the top of the market. Your honey is the best - sell it as the best.

Had you considered some subscription mail-order service? You get the punter to sign up to receive a jar or jars of honey off you whenever you harvest. You send him different honeys from each of your hives, each with tasting notes, and little picture of the hive, and a bit about the area. I would imagine most people would be amazed how different honey can be from two hives next to each other, or the same hive in two seasons. You have to mark batch numbers on the jars, so why not make it like Scotch, with a unique Hive number and LIMITED EDITION JAR 1/300 or whatever on the side. It's unique, the bees will never make the same again. You educate your market to be discerning and understand honey - just like wine, beer, whisky etc.

Does anyone sell pollen? Google it - it's 125g (4oz) for a tenner. I have no idea what people do with it.

Likewise there was a woman at the apiary on about royal jelly. I'd imagine that's a b*gg*r to get in any quantity, and I would not know where to start, but it's £24 for 90 150mg capsules, that's 15g in total (about half an ounce). Again, I have no idea what anyone does with the stuff.

NM

 

[Hivemaker.]

Money to be made from bee venom as well....£27,000 per ounce.

 

[Nose Ma]

Money to be made from bee venom as well....£27,000 per ounce.

I'll start sucking it out of my hands next time! Wow.

 

[hedgerow pete]

the post about 5 euros for a plastic pot says it all really, if it was dressed up in a fine glass jar and properly opackaged then what is it worth 15, 25 1,000??

wine is compressed fermented grapes in a glass bucket , if so why do bottles cost 5 euro and 5,000 euros , make your product a bespoke product and increase its value

 

[Chris Luck]

the post about 5 euros for a plastic pot says it all really, if it was dressed up in a fine glass jar and properly opackaged then what is it worth 15, 25 1,000??

€5.50 I should think, it certainly wouldn't add more than 50 centimes where I live which isn't that far from Mike, you simply don't understand the market here. People aren't as impressed with packaging as they are in the UK or perhaps larger French cities. This is a honey producing Country, it's everywhere with massive exports to other EU Countries, especially Germany.

Chris

 

[Winker]

looks like you all skipped over my comment or it went over your heads

Turnover is Vanity
Profit is Sanity

 

[Poly Hive]

TBH Winker I read it and thought yes well and?

PH

 

[Black Comb]

You've missed off the last line Winker

"Cash is reality".

The whole couplet applies to any business.

I can sell loads at £5 per 12oz jar but can't produce it fast enough.

 

[Nose Ma]

I'd have said "cash is king" but it's the same thing.

To a certain extent they are linked. No turnover -> no profit. No turnover -> no cash.

Profit is the "accounting exercise", cash is the stuff that stops a business going bust.

 

[Winker]

TBH Winker I read it and thought yes well and?

PH

yes well and? You're all banging the drum about selling for a profit and not undercutting the market price.

Turnover is Vanity:
Those who are vain and sell 10,000 jars of Honey @ £3.00 a jar may well be able to boast they sold 10,000 jars of Honey that year. Vain people dont stay in the Business long, as they soon find Effort V Reward is too low to carry on.


Profit is Sanity:
But he who sold 5,000 jars of Honey @ £5.50 a jar may not be able to boast they sold the most Honey this year, but he can say he had a more profitable year. Thus keeping him interrested in the subject longer and in Business longer

I run my own Wedding Photography and I charge twice as much as most of the photographers in my area. I get on average 25-30 bookings a year. Some of the local Photographers laugh at me for only getting around 25 jobs a year, when some of them are doing 50 jobs a year and they tell me I cant call myself a Wedding photographer if I am not out there doing the job EVERY week of the year. But wait…who earns more!

 

[Winker]

Edit:

I run my own Wedding Photography Business and I charge twice as much as most of the photographers in my area. I get on average 25-30 bookings a year. Some of the local Photographers laugh at me for only getting around 25 jobs a year, when some of them are doing 50 jobs a year and they tell me I cant call myself a Wedding photographer if I am not out there doing the job EVERY week of the year. But wait…who earns more!

 

[hedgerow pete]

drstitson, now i am not a clever business man nor do i have brains to fully under stand your posting but to me personaly i was always taught that every thing in business has a cost even the free stuff has a cost. i dont see why you would discount the whole labour issue. according to my fag packet figures the labour part is one if not the larges costs to bee keeping.
just because i own the bussiness or the hives in this case and have a main job i dont see where in a business paln you would want to remove a massive cost to the profit and loss line

i understand the idea that i have a main job and as such the bees are an extra, but the idea i brought to this thread was to prove or as in my case disprove the fact that you can make a profit from bees. know if i had 200 hives that would be a differant case completly but for my few hives it does make a difference if i have to spend out lots with no come back of return as with the work i have money coming in makes the difference to food on the table let alone beer or fags.

or maybe i have read your message wrong. like i say business man i ant

 

[psafloyd]

You've missed off the last line Winker

"Cash is reality".

The whole couplet applies to any business.

I can sell loads at £5 per 12oz jar but can't produce it fast enough.

A fiver for a 12oz jar? Fantastic news.

If I get to the stage of having sufficient produce, I was thinking of having bog standard boring 1lb/454g jars and 12ox hexagonal ones at the same price or for a small premium.

The latter are more expensive, but more of a luxury purchase and quite often people will buy honey for friends who have expressed a liking for it as a gift.

Certainly the hexagonal jars are very attractive, store well (the bees know best) and rather appropriate.

I take it others have been doing this for generations?

 

[drstitson]

HRP - as i said your time and labour IS a cost that you should budget for when working out prices to charge

BUT, assuming you work alone on the hobby...

if you can budget for that ( your labour) and make an extra "profit" on top YOU have EARNED a sum equal to the labour cost plus the profit NOT the profit alone.

for example:

say i spend £10k on bees, hives, sugar, petrol, jars etc pa (true outgoings), sell 10,000 jars of honey at £5 each (£50k income) and budget for 2000 hours of my time at £10/h (£20k labour) i may display a paper profit of £20k BUT have also trousered the £20k "wages". Labour costs only disappear into the ether if you are actually employing someone to do the work.

of course this is a simplification that doesn't cover any tax/NI due.

 

[Monsieur Abeille]

I run my own Wedding Photography and I charge twice as much as most of the photographers in my area....Some of the local Photographers laugh at me for only getting around 25 jobs a year, when some of them are doing 50 jobs a year ..... But wait…who earns more!

Both the same I'd have thought, but yours is the better life choice