Subject: Is bee keeping commercially viable?

From: [email-masked] (Christopher Dew)
Date: Wed, 1 May 1996 13:09:44 GMT

I was wondering how much honey honey-bees produced and how many hives you
would need to make sufficient profit for time invested.

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From: [email-masked] (Joel Govostes)
Date: Wed, 01 May 1996 14:54:51 -0500

In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]

> would need to make sufficient profit for time invested.

Hi Chris!
I'm in central New York State, but have read alot of British bee books and
periodicals and am interested in the UK bee-scene.

Over here honey is cheap and unfortunately, to make a living people have
to run 300-400 colonies at least.  This turns out to be a bit more work
than one person can appropriately do, so either the honey yield suffers or
they have to hire seasonal help.

In the UK it's a little different.  There is a good demand for "British Honey."
(People over here don't give a damn where it's from, so there is much
dumping-in of honey on the market from South America, Canada, and China -
this has continued to depress the price.)

Please let me suggest a book which I found to be a big help and full of
USEFUL information.  It's HONEY BY THE TON, written in 83 by Mr. Oliver
Field, a commercial beekeeper in Oxfordshire.  The publisher is Northern
Bee Books, but an earlier edition came from another company.

Anyway, this book is by an operating, successful bee farmer in your
country and carries on the tradition begun by Mr. R.O.B. Manley in the
40's, who was the prominent commercial beekeeper at that time and wrote
some wonderful books on the subject.  They are my favorites (Honey
Farming, Beekeeping in Britain, Honey Production in the British Isles).
THey are dated but still much of the information applies today.

To answer your question, in Britain you can make a living with around 200
hives (at least), and this is do-able for one person alone in an enjoyable
way.  This usually means moving the hives to oilseed rape fields in the
spring and then to other locations for field beans, charlock, clover, etc.
later.

I wish I was in Britain as I would like to be a commercial beekeeper but
here in the states it requires so much more of an investment

There is a web page for Thornes which is a bee equipment supplier in UK.

Best wishes to you and if I can be of any help at all please e-mail me.

BTW other authors in Britain to note:  Ron Brown, Harry Riches  ...check it out.

Kindest regards,  Joel    (age 31, 25 hives, nr. Ithaca, NY)

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From: "Theodore V. Fischer" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 01 May 1996 15:55:01 -0500

> would need to make sufficient profit for time invested.

This is a very difficult question to answer, inasmuch as there is a 
lot of variability in honey production dependant upon local 
conditions.  The average yield for Michigan, USA, is probably quite 
different than that for Bristol, England.  One would have to get local 
tables of agricultural production and just look up the average yield 
for honey.  Then, again, individual methods of beekeeping will produce 
quite disparate honey yields as well (two-queen colonies far 
outproduce two single-queen colonies, for example).  And, of course, 
as for any agricultural endeavor, variation in local weather 
conditions will make the difference between a disaster, a mediocre 
year, or a production exceeding all expectations.  But to give you an 
idea of the variation possible, you could have as little as 10 lbs, or 
as much as 250 lbs in a colony.  I have had both extremes in my 
apiary. 

The question as to sufficient profit is a very subjective one.  
Obviously, the more time one devotes to one's bees, the better 
maintained they're likely to be, and consequently the more productive.  
So you will have to come to your own conclusions as to how profitable 
they could be, depending upon your individual management decisions.

Ted Fischer

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From: [email-masked] (Andy Nachbaur)
Date: Sat, 4 May 1996 01:52:00 GMT

P>From: [email-masked] (Christopher Dew)
 >Subject: Is bee keeping commercially viable?

P>I was wondering how much honey honey-bees produced and how many hives you
 >would need to make sufficient profit for time invested.

Hi Christopher,

I am sure there are as many answers to that question as there are
countries that bees can be kept in.

Here in California the average is 1,000 hives per man year labor
input and the capital investment today would be about $100.00 per
hive. The annual cash costs could be as much or more then $50. per hive.
The average bee business here is maybe 2,000 hives. But we have many
with 7 to 15 thousand hives. The return from beekeeping in all studies
done here in the last 40 years by several different government agency's
and economists shows minimum wages and little or nothing returned for
capital invested. Beekeeping can be very rewarding to those who love to
live with much physical pain and do not mind the fact that they will
never do as well as their brother in law working at some 8 to 5 inside
clerk's job. Beekeeping requires 12 and 14 hour days and hundreds of
nights away from home in California at least. Beekeeper wife's are
considered widows by the local community and problems do arise.

If you can get past all that there is nothing grater then the pride
of keeping bee's, a job that can earn you and your family great respect
in your community, and modest rewards for capital invested. Beekeepers
who are fortunate enough to have a wife and children interested in
keeping bees are double blessed and there are many in the beekeeping
community that are three or four generations into the business.

                                ttul Andy-

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