My Advice To Those Looking To Make Money From Bees
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- Опубліковано 25 лип 2024
- In this video I chat about the mistakes I made trying to build my bee operation and the guidelines I have for those trying to build a profitable apiary.
#beekeeping #beekeeper #bees
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I am so glad I ran across your video! You just got another subscriber and I will be looking forward to seeing more content you put out!
Thank you for your thoughts on this topic. I always look forward to your videos.
Good advice. Thanks for sharing what you learned from your experiences.
I agree 100% first thing build up too the number of hives you are wanting to keep. Then go for it. Great video thanks
Thank you for this video! I’m there right now. Back to the drawing boards...slower this time!
Absolutely 100% true spot on advice.
Thanks for this advice, friend. I appreciate your honesty and wisdom.
Best vid yet bro I'm in my second year of beekeeping up to four colonies hoping to make it to six going into winter. You're
I appreciate this video as I am in that place also. A video of how you got started in beekeeping for a living would be interesting.
It is an interesting story, thanks for the idea I do think I'll make that video.
Excellent advice for sure my friend. Thanks for sharing.
Never thought I'd be a beekeeper, but here i am! I'm 3 years in with 3 hives. I started bee removal as a way to grow my colonies. There are too few people who have the passion, you got my subscription and hope we can chat bees if possible.
True but if I love honey and money so that makes my passion
That's right
Excellent video. I am trying to go from a hobby to sideliner.
Great to hear from experience. Thanx.
I totally understand a business strategy of focusing on one strength before branching out. If growth is the focus, what is your suggestion for a set of realistic yearly targets?
If honey sales is the focus, what is your recommendation for a realistic sideliner goal after growth is achieved?
If nuc and queen sales is the focus, what is the number of hives need to support nuc/queen sales?
Very informative content. Thank you!
Thanks man. You just saved me from a lot of heartache.
Solid advise thank you !!!
Great advice. Thank you.
Thanks for the solid advice.
Great advice. Way to multi task. Thanks
I wish I would have seen this video a few years ago. I'm my own worst enemy. Very good points to remember as I plan for next year. Thanks
This is solid advice man!
Awesome videos, I really enjoy them.
Great Advice. Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us Noobs
Very good points! I make splits because i have to as swarm prevention and sell them because my yards are full and i feel i cant keep more hives there! I live in South Florida and bees here fly year round there for i only have maybe three months out of the year where the bees are not building up!
Crazy different than our year, lol. I'm starting fall feeding now, and my bees will be clustered up between October and April.
Good stuff, thank you.
I love the one handed queen catchers - they make it easy for us noobies to catch and mark queens with less repercusions
Great video. And good advice. Me? I just want to take my bees through a winter. I want to see what its like to begin a spring with overwintered colonies. This is my first full season in beekeeping.
That's a good goal. Heavy and healthy before winter, if you hit those marks, you'll have some success.
Makes sense. Good info.
Great info thank you
I'm in what I refer to as 'Simpleton Mode': I just want to get 3 hives (Top Bar Langstroth) and see them survive and make it into year 2, after going through a Winter; AFTER that, THEN I can consider 'plans' about 'making money'!
I learned a LONG, LONG, time ago, to start with the BASICS: keep your livestock fed, health, warm/cool, and safe, and THEN consider anything else AFTER that point........getting the cart before the horse NEVER ends up well.......
Thanks for a really great video....I've sub'd and hit the bell......looking forward to more and especially about your mini-hives....I noticed a number of the frames you pulled had excess comb hanging below (with the one with what looked to be honey falling off), which I read as the bees wanted MORE space (a regular Deep) to build comb.....or am I just reading things into it?
Cheers from the Oil Patch in Central WY
Bees will draw extra comb wherever there's extra space. It doesn't necessarily mean they want extra space, just that they want the space they're occupying to be filled with combs.
Solid advice! Thank you for these words of advice and wisdom. This helps me to continue building slowly as I have been. I would add to that by saying, anyone thinking of making money with bees, don't pull out a loan! Build slowly with your own money or money you make selling one product of the hive. A loan just makes it harder to make a living AND pay off the loan. As the saying goes, Rome wasn't built in a day.
Truth.
You got that right. Having to pay interest makes it worse. I am staying away from any kind of loan if possible.
Great information. Thanks.
lol to your channel name. Thanks for watching.
Awesome advice! Thanks
Thank you, Donovan!
I like this guy. He's super cool.
Good advice.
Great video!
It’s just so hard not to be able to go full force.. I want more!
Great video on a commonly asked newbee question, How do I make $ on this bee hobby.
Good advice! Reminds me of another farming term, Pigs get fat, hogs go to slaughter
SOMETHING are POLITICIANS need to think about.
I am getting kinda old to carry back and forth honey supers ( empty to and full out) of the bee yard , cutting comb , extraction and so forth. Would one those “ tap a super “ thingies work so to reduce the heavy work need for me to continue beekeeping? 🌼🌸
I wouldn't go that route. what I would suggest is running smaller frames and fewer frames in each box. Say, 7 or 8 frame mediums.
B&K Bees I appreciate your feedback.
bees are my favorite thing...i like that
Very good thoughts. I am at this point too, can I make a go of this after this second year or what...is this a viable business, I know sideline it is but can you make a living off of it??? These are the types of questions rolling around in my head. I appreciate your experience and sharing it. It would seem that we have to focus on one aspect and stick to it like you said. THANKS!!!!
What size hives are those? Look smaller than others I’ve seen. Where do I find them?
You are so right I’m dealing with the after affects of selling nukes from my Bees. right now and I would like to get one of them queen marking cages that you got what’s the name of that
One handed queen catcher/marker. I got it from Mann Lake.
Best way to sell nucs is to catch all the swarms you possibly can. If you set out many swarm catchers over a wide span of territory and are successful, Repeat the process as much as you can and you get free bees to sell.. Whatever the case may be. Good luck and happy beekeeping.
Good advice.
Thanks again.
Watch all your videos.
I want to do better. But I have like 3 jobs and bees. Maybe when I retire from main job I can give the girls the attention they deserve. 🤔
I want to get into selling queens I started this year with one over winterd colony, now I'm up to 10 from splits, swarms, and cutouts. My question is after you pull your queens from the mating nucs what do you do with them untill you sell them, and how long can you keep them in the cage for?
I sell them or ship them within 24 hours of caging. I don't like the idea of keeping queens caged up, but in a pinch you can keep them in a cage inside a queen bank for weeks. A queen bank is just a queenless colony that will take care of caged queens.
@@BKBees I guess my next question would be do you take orders before you have queens ready, then ship them out when they are mated? My problem is I'm so small still I can produce more than I have people to buy them but would like to have them avalible when they are needed. Might need to look into advertising them more next year depending on how the winter goes.
Matt Thomas c
@@mattthomas6028 I do gather a list of orders throughout the offseason and early portion of the bee year so that I always have customers waiting when I cage queens. I also have a lot of drop in customers, local beeks.
To be honest though, I might stop taking pre orders and just let people get them when they're available, next year. It's hard to predict how many I'll have at any given time, and I hate disappointing people when I don't have their queens ready.
If you want a website to help you sell queens, I'm your man. Check out bkbeesites.com to see some of my web design work.
Interested in bee operation
i have 1 1/2 acres on Oahu, is that enough AG 1 land ?
RR
Ok. Awesome Video. Im taking the advice. So in your experience how many HIVES should you aim to have before you start SELLING NUCS?
Depends on how many nucs you want to sell. I'd say you should probably have 70 or so hives to consistently sell 20 nucs a year. Some years you'll be able to sell 70, but you definitely shouldn't plan on it.
Great video! How do you sell the final product of honey? Not sure where to sell it
I sell it to stores and online. Go into stores with some samples and a case of nicely labeled jars and you'll start finding vendors.
@@BKBees thanks for the info!
How many beehives you kept around that place where you were sitting ? I just got one beehive and want to get more, I'm planning to keep hives on the rooftop.
There are 40 hives in that yard along with 60 or so double mating nucs.
In most cases it is hard to get equipment up or down from roof tops. A deep super full of honey can weigh 40-80 lbs of honey and you need room to take the supers up there. Also you need to be able to check the hives and treat them on a regular basis. It can be tough enough on the ground, I could not see myself hauling my hives up to my flat-top roof and taking honey super full of honey down the roof.......no way.
This is interesting info. It would have been good to get some hard numbers other than $150 per nucleus.
My dream is to get a few hectares during my working life, plant it with a good mix of trees for a very long flowering season that will be almost ready when I am about to retire and then do bee keeping as a semi-commercial business for selling nucs/queens and renting bees to local farmers (and maybe some other compatible hobbies) with honey as a bonus.
🐝🐝🐝🍯🍯🍯
Excellent advice! I want to add my 2 cents to it (please correct me if I'm wrong). During the 2018-2019 winter - I lost all but 2 hives - and learned some hard lessons (my eyes are getting a bit watery just thinking about it). Beekeeping is expensive and those costs can vary from year to year (great year vs. bad year). After working with bees for the 1st year you should be able to get a rough idea of how many hives you can handle and set your "realistic" goal on the number of hives you can afford to build up to. Here in Mid-Missouri, the winter months are a great time to slowly build or buy new hives, supers, frames and sugar (remember $$$) to help meet your goal on the number of hives you want to build up to in the Spring. I do double brood boxes with 8' long beehive stands ($$$) and it makes "spring" splits super easy and reliable (most years). I have 4 bee yards and I keep at least 12 to 16 hives per yard (remember gasoline costs money to travel between bee yards). The bee yard closest to my house (in my case in my actual yard) is use for queen rearing and NUC production - because it requires the most attention. The other 3 yards are for honey production. In mid-September and then in early Spring (the timing depending upon weather), I give all of them pollen patties ($$$) and syrup ($$$) - as much as they will consume. IF I had a mild winter and my bees came thru it in good shape - I can split every hive (once) in all 3 of the honey yards and still get honey production (do no give syrup during honey production - no funny honey here!). Cannot forget FALL and SPRING MITE treatments ($$$) for every hive. For every split, you are making a new hive and you will HAVE TO have additional supers, lids, inner covers, bottom boards, etc.... ($$$). My point is - be realistic in setting your goals, count your costs before you spend the money (estimate your costs in advance) and take 2 or 3 years to build up to the number of hives you can "reasonably" and "reliably" care for. I've just now recovered from my 2018-2019 winter losses but, it was at the cost of ALL Spring honey production, the ability to sell NUCs, the ability to sell queens, and I purchased 4 good queens in the Spring ($$$) from a known reliable source. Remember to paint and take care of your equipment to make it last longer - replacing boxes, etc... costs more money than taking care of them in the first place. Well, it's time to purchase some more honey supers and frames and pray for a fall nectar flow....
Yeah, losses are tough, but I think your general ideas are good. Learn from your mistakes and go forward with an amended plan, and you'll be okay. I've been there, by the way, so I feel for ya.
I hope to be able to supplement my retirement with my bees. If my bees survive the winter I plan to buy five more nucs I hope to get at least one split off each original colony two if I'm lucky. How many nucs do you try to maintain through winter per colony? Also do I need to form an LLC?
I'm not sure what you mean about how many nucs per colony. I don't go into winter with 5 frame nucs. I do go into winter with 10 frame deeps, tons of those.
You should form an LLC if you're trying to make profit from your bees. Get some liability insurance and cover your ass.
From a poorboy. Always LLC.
There are people who only live to sue. And liers/LAWYER'S & POLITICIANS who encourage them. PROTECT YOURSELF ALWAYS.
EXPECT EVERYONE TO SUE YOU EVERYONE! ! !
IF SOMEONE THINKS YOU ARE WORTH 1000.00 THEY WILL SUE YOU FOR IT.
THAT IS WHAT HAVING LAWYER'S AS POLITICIANS HAS DONE FOR THIS COUNTRY.
@@BKBees sorry I should have been more specific. I'm surprised you don't over winter nucs. What I was really asking I guess is how many splits are you making per production colony?
This makes sense if you have tons of money laying around.
What are nukes? I’m legit just tryna figure it out ty for you time my goal is to collect honey from the flow hive so is that Ight ? I’m thinking of trying to do this eventually
Yeah, get your honey and sell it, make more bees.
Nucs are small "nucleus" colonies, usually 5 frames of bees and brood.
B&K Bees oh Ight so it’s basically what you buy to get started?
@@gentlejake605 exactly.
B&K Bees Ight I’m trying to get a job atm to get around 5k for a real of land if possible and live on it with solar panels and bee keep ornsum idk hahah thank you
Hey thanks for the advice...!!
I want to share a thought with you...not so much about this subject...but still it may give you an idea for a future video...I started doing grafting queens this year....limited success...but for info to pass on to your followers...Don’t make the mistake of giving up on a virgin queen returning from out on her becoming mated...don’t give up on her to early... and use that hive to be a cell builder...or as a queen rearing hive...I did...she returned...tore down all my queens that I had going...she wiped them all out...is there a set time to wait on a returning mated virgin queen...in days...
Dude, if she isn't back by nightfall, then she ain't coming back.
You obviously just didn't find her during your inspection.
Get better at beekeeping before you start dishing out hot tips.
Haha....that is funny....I’ve did hundreds of hives for 35-years....live and learn....
Well, you know what they say... experience doesn't always equate to knowledge.
Virgins can be tough to find. For that reason I don't even look for them. But to add to your thoughts, Ed, I make sure to give at least 3 weeks from the day of emergence before taking other action on a hive.
Lol...nothing but love for you man....May God show you the light....
Am there now
For me I want 30 hives for honey and wax to sell good advice Now after winter you can add the week hives together to make strong ones just saying
Definitely. Although I like to let the stragglers have a month or so to build up, sometimes a dud right out of winter will catch up to the rest and surprise you.
Feeding is always a good option after the winter
11 minutes of my life I will never get back
Oh no. I'm heartbroken.
Those are the smallest frames I've ever seen. What kind of hive is that?
It's a mini mating nuc. I use those baby hives to take care of queen cells and get queens mated.
I'm at the point i need to sell bees. I don't want to expand and they are multiplying too fast. Our weather gives them longer to brood up.
OkieRobs bees: I had this problem! I had no intention of selling nucs for a couple of years yet and then i had to split so they wouldn’t swarm!
Nathan Barker , this is my 6th year with bees and hardly any winter losses so I'm up to 40 hives and I would prefer to have 10 to 20 at most.
OkieRobs bees you have a lot of hives!
That's the best damned problem I've ever heard of!
B&K Bees its an awsome problem!😀🐝
Always start small
I think we all have fell for this pitfall 👍
I have a question on average how much is a nuke and how many hives would I have to have to say to sell 50 nukes over winter in the spring
We sell nucs for around $200 a piece. I think selling half of what you have is a good formula, if you have 100 hives overwinter, you can safely sell 50 nucs in the spring.
I've been renting houses for a living for several years now, I'm getting sick of it. Thinking about selling a house or two and buying some land with a beat up trailer house and giving the bee business a go. I want to start with 20 hives and work my way up to 200 or more. I have zero experience. How much land would I need? What sort of land? Would thickly forested land be ok? It can be the cheapest. Am I nuts? My wife thinks I am. In terms of return on investment it sounds pretty dang legit to me, and surely it's more fun than what I am doing now.
You are not nuts. I cannot understate the importance of mite treatment. Without this skill you will fail. Other things are important also, but mites will wipe you out.
I am in libya north africa mideterean weather I started last year with two nukes about 5 frames each I lost one due to laying workers and the other is ok i feed it firs month then I just left it because I got busy but since December I am feeding it now its about 12 frames and swarmed 3 times I caught them all
Is it worth it I really still do not know because when you calculate the feeding expenses frames and wax price I think it is not much profit now i just want to reach 10 beehive this year thin I will start calculating accurately if you sell both honey and bees its profitable but selling bees only not sure maybe profitable but not as much i thought
I'm coming out with a video tomorrow that I think will answer your questions.
If you make it to 10 hives and then stop growing I think you'll start making some real money.
@@BKBees
It's been about a year since my first comment
That beehive is now about 6 and I sold 6 nucs so total is 12 I also caught a swarm which I have split and now about 6 hives
I really regret selling that 6 nucs some of them have swarmed as the one who bought them told me
I will not sell anything any more until I reach my goal
I plan to reach 50 by next year or at least 20 to 30 strong hives then increasing them gradually
I agrea with much of what you said
My main concern now is diseases I think it's the only thing it can make me fail
I bought 6 mini nucs I will try 2 of them next week because I have a new split with queen cells about to hatch
What's a 'nukes' that he keeps saying
Nucleus colony. It's a "starter hive" usually sold as a 5 frame colony to people for anywhere between $125 - $225.
Beekeeping has some odd terms, also "super" threw me off when I was new as well as nuc
So the way you explain this obviously it’s a front loaded venture that involves patience and time. How many hives could I start out with that isn’t to much of strain to maintain.
I'd start with three. I think that's perfect for the first year. If you dig it, then get another 15 or 20.
B&K Bees anything I should be researching as far as materials to build or are there kits I should buy. I have a three stall garage and tools so it’s doable.
@@breonnataylorspuckeredturd8116 if you want a one stop intro that'll tell you pretty much everything you need to know, check out the crash course here on B&K Bees. It goes over all of the equipment and protective gear and stuff like that.
Well I'll tell you once again I wouldn't give over a $140 for a new no matter what kind of a new kit bug I think that the Robin people are called when you're bringing a Newcomb it might want to believe in before you get it started good and then you'd lost a $140 or better this is a rob that said that
sell nukes? what word are you saying?
Nucs, short for nucleus colony. It's a 5 frame bee hive that people buy and sell as starter colonies.
I have an interest in keeping bees but have never done so and no education on the subject. But having watched your video, I would suggest a partner. One focus on money the other focus on the bees. I think the distraction of dollars can influence or wreck your passion. Just my uninformed opinion. I subscribed to your Channel