Starting a beekeeping business may
sound exciting and fun, but in all reality it's a lot of
work and is time consuming. Most people who are in this
are actually doing this as a hobby. Having a hobby and a
livelihood are two entirely different areas since one is
something you invest time and in some cases money and
one is when you're trying to make a living at.
Beekeeping is like farming you have to stay on top of
the market demands and be technologically savvy because
much of the business is going to depend on how fast you
can produce a single product.
Yet this is where you're going to learn that beekeeping
isn't even like that because if you expect to make a
profit you would have had to have been in the business
for a long time and following the trends on what the
market demanded of the time. Today if you don't even
have a website consider yourself a fossil in the area of
business because that's your only link to the rest of
the world by having a website or even a page.
Most of the companies today are commercialized because
the small businesses today are just not equipped to
handle the mass production of honey and small businesses
won't make a lot giving the fact you are paid by the
pound and the average amount after weighing the whole
season isn't a whole lot. Commercial beekeepers average
a couple thousand pounds, but farmers have to really
push production if they want to average at least $15-30
a year. This is a competitive field to be selling honey
and producing beeswax products since the beekeeping
industry doesn't function as a co-op like many organic
farmers do in this day and age where they work together
beekeeping is sub-contract work and many of these small
businesses are sub-contracted by these major
corporations to produce honey under their label and
their food line.
Sub-contracting may sound good and all, but you are also
competing for these contracts as well with other small
businesses and the high risk is that you can lose your
contracts if the companies who hire you aren't happy
with something for whatever reason it could be the
quality of the product to anything. That's why this is a
risky business to get into because you never know what
the outcome is and how the market will fair during the
season since this is what a beekeeper bases their
financial output by which is how much they anticipate to
make on a seasonal basis.
Beekeepers almost have to base their financial gain
through good weather and season with the market demand,
but you can't always predict good weather, which is what
many worry about. They have more to worry about than
crop farmers since they can make the difference when
they get rain and lower climate suitable to the food
they're growing. Beekeeping is dependent on the activity
of the bees and how well they produce honey since bees
produce in certain climates and temperatures. If you're
expecting to thrive in this business understand that
it's a lot of work and a lot of time invested into
making this work for the long run.