How to Make Money Beekeeping

hey there larissa from beekeeping made simple and this video is about different ways you can make money from your bees and honey and if you're just looking for a list of ideas um i make easy for you right in the description below i have like bullet points and all of them listed below but here in this video i'm going to talk about the ways that have worked for me for making an income i'm going to talk about ways that commercial apiaries i worked for on a larger scale made in income versus other ways you can do it on a small scale and as a beginner maybe even in your first or second year how you can make some money from beekeeping because it is possible even your first year you can still produce some income and getting started isn't cheap so is a great way to offset the cost of beekeeping is to sell some of the products you harvest from your hive now the first way you can make money as a beekeeper is by selling your honey obviously that's a big one and an obvious one but there are different ways that you can do that so you have different honey products you have your liquid honey which you might have different varieties uh depending on if you're harvesting in the early summer or the late summer or if you're in a place that has year-round beekeeping you might even have a fall or winter honey you also have honeycomb you also can cream your honey you can make infusions you can add rosemary and garlic and infuse those flavors into your honey or you can make confections you can add cacao you can add ground coffee cinnamon vanilla chili peppers there are so many things you can add to honey to make a variety of honey products so as a beekeeper a small scale you can sell a variety of these honey products in a variety of sizes retail or wholesale what i worked for a large honey packing company and so they're different than beekeepers they don't have hives or maybe they have a few but what they mostly do is they buy honey in bulk put it into smaller jars and sell at retail so a lot of the large beekeeping companies they don't have really their own label most of what they're doing is putting it into barrels which is over 600 pounds of honey and they're selling it as a barrel to a honey packing place or maybe to a beverage company or they might be selling five gallon buckets which is about 60 pounds of honey to a bakery or a resort or a restaurant and so one way when you're thinking about selling your honey you want to think about how you want to sell your honey and what you have usually what your options you're going to be limited with your options if you only have one or two beehives obviously you're not going to be selling a barrel of honey so what you want if you don't have a lot of honey to sell is to think of ways to sell it at a premium cost now that might be adding something like cacao or chili peppers or something to make a confection to make it seem like a specialty product and then you can raise the price of it or if you have a specific blossom honey that your bees are gathering um maybe you have tupelo or mesquite or here in hawaii we have the lihua and the kiawe and those are honeys that go at a premium price so you can sell less of it but make more money a honeycomb is what we primarily do here and that also goes for a premium price almost twice as much as what a liquid honey goes for and so if you don't have a lot of honey think of ways you can make it a little bit increase the price of it and if you have a lot of honey then great ways to sell it are to sell it in bulk um now when first getting started if you have enough honey that you can sell to people even if it is just a few cases retail like direct to customers the best way to go start with friends and family and bringing it to work if your place of employment allows it i wouldn't go wholesale until you know that you can fill those large orders because once you get a wholesale account you don't want to have to cancel it with that store because then it's really hard to get it back a lot harder than getting the wholesale account in the first place so you have your honey um and if you don't have a lot of honey another thing you can do is go to a bee farm and actually just buy their honey in bulk and fill it and that's what one farm i worked for did they had some coffee trees they had some they had a 1 point 130 bee hives some macadamia nut trees but mostly what they did was they bought these products in bulk from farmers down the road and they put it in their packaging and some people look down on this but now that i've worked for companies like this there is no reason to think that this is bad now obviously don't put on your packaging that all of this comes from our bees or you know make up some fake story don't lie to people but there are a lot of farmers that have a lot of product and they don't know how to sell it they don't know how to market it they would rather sell it in bulk for a cheaper than to have to deal with the bottling and the wholesale accounts and all of that stuff so if you're just getting started and you've managed to get a wholesale account or your honey's selling out and you can't keep up with demand i would not feel bad about going to another bee farm and seeing if you can buy their honey in bulk in like five gallon buckets or so and bottling it in your bottles don't lie to people and tell them that all of this came from your beehives but there's nothing wrong with doing that and it's a great way to make a little bit of extra money to help pay for more beekeeping equipment so that you can have more beehives and be able to harvest more honey later on in a few years so another way that you can um make a profit as a beekeeper is with your beeswax you can sell beeswax just solid chunks of beeswax first you want to render it which is how you separate the wax from the honey and the propolis you want to turn it into a solid chunk of wax and not sell the comb and you can sell it just like that there are places you can sell through amazon you can sell through etsy you can sell through ebay um you could sell at farmer's markets you can sell through social media or email your friends and family actually um there is a a website called ubersuggest u-b-e-r-s-u-g-g-e-s-t the link is in the show notes and on there you can type in a keyword and you'll see how many people google that keyword so you can if you put in um buy beeswax or buy beeswax near me or buy beeswax and the city you live in or the state you live in you'll see how many people are searching that and there are actually quite a few people as of when i checked it yesterday that are googling how to buy beeswax so it's actually a product that a lot of people look for all you want to do is get one of those molds so that you have like a nice mold that says maybe beeswax on it the little you can buy the mold that would make it into one ounce blocks or the one pound box in a pinch you can use silicone ice cube trays work really well too you can pour your beeswax into there and those are that's an easy way to sell your wax but if you want to if you don't have a lot of wax then just like with bulking up your honey to increase the price a way you can do that with wax is making products out of your wax if you have a lot of wax you can just sell it in blocks but if you don't have a lot of wax you can make candles out of it you can make lotions and other kinds of body products and you can make those beeswax wraps which through that uber suggests you you'll see that there are a lot of people that google buying beeswax wraps and it's a really popular thing that people want to purchase now and basic swag for those of you that don't know it's it's kind of like an alternative to cellophane it's reusable you're really just taking fabric and you're dipping it um in beeswax you add some jojoba oil and a few other things to it and and it's it's similar to cellophane or a ziploc bag except it doesn't it's not it doesn't hold liquids or anything um lotions are another really popular one and the price of lotions varies quite a bit it's i mean you'll find some lotions that are very end and cost a lot of money and some that are considerably cheaper chapstick or lip balm those are is usually the most popular item that everyone wants to buy you can actually add honey and beeswax to your soaps if you want if you make soaps i make a psoriasis eczema cream with beeswax in it i make um belly butter for women who are pregnant with beeswax in it a healing salve um it's really endless the different kinds of lotions you can make with beeswax now you don't make as much of a profit with the body products because there's a lot that you have to purchase there's very little beeswax in these products if you put too much in your products going to be really waxy and hard and most people want it a little bit more oily so it's smoother to go on their skin but if you don't have a lot of wax and then that is really the best way to start as a beginner if you're looking to go to a farmer's market or a festival or sell some things to family or just want to make presents for family and friends really and again with the beeswax wraps that doesn't um require a lot of wax either candles now that's almost pure beeswax and you can buy a candle mold for you know 10 to 20 dollars a lot of beekeeping supply websites have them i made my own candle mold which you can do as well um but it's a little bit more expensive to do that usually it's about 30 bucks for you to make one candle mold and i use the umu which is also in the description down below in the show notes and again you can buy beeswax you can buy it from a local farmer in bulk the farm i worked for they actually sold a 30 pound blocks of it for fairly cheap and then you could use that for body products and candles and you know it's a great it's just good to know that you have a backup plan if you start to run out of product you can go somewhere else and and source this material until you have more from your bees once you have you know some products to sell a great way to increase that final sale whether you're doing it at a market or online or through an etsy shop or whatever is to make some additional be love products is what i call them um we sell t-shirts like the one i'm wearing right now it's plain blue on the front but on the back it's uh you might be a beekeeper if uh on the back with a bunch of things that we came up with my favorite one being you might be a beekeeper if your first pound of honey costs you six hundred dollars but um you can have uh t-shirts with any design you want made on demand they're they're actually printed one by one through a program called printful if you have a shopify website and the link to that is in the description down below you can buy sticker paper or go to a print shop and have the stickers made of um your logo oh and then there is also propolis so there's not a ton that you can do with propolis some people do bipropyl just straight out but mostly i see tinctures made with propolis and they might be sold as a throat spray or added to some body products in my opinion if you really want that wow factor the reason why people will buy a body product adding royal jelly sometimes attracts people's attention i haven't found that people will buy something because it has propolis in it or i haven't found that purples makes people more likely to buy a product but so i haven't found that it's worth it nor have i found that it makes products better other than the throat spray which is pretty much just a propolis tincture but it is something that you can play around with if you like now okay so then aside from all of those products you can sell knowledge you can give a beekeeping class i don't recommend this if you're just in your first or second year beekeeping don't don't go making beekeeping classes i mean you can maybe make like a a class at a at a school where it's just an introduction to basin beekeeping where you explain like how to get started and the basics of what goes on in the hive and and things like that like a very basic introduction but don't sell full beekeeping classes until you really know what you're doing and also you can sell bees you can sell packages nucleus hives or just the queen bee usually to start what people do is they sell a nuke and i wouldn't do that your first couple years either you really want to make sure you have a good stock before you get into that which means you know you're you're spending seasons with the bees you're seeing which ones have high mite infestations and which ones seem to manage it fairly well on their own you want to see which ones are aggressive and which ones are a little bit calmer and and start to breed a good stock before you get into selling nukes so that's not a beginner option but i um once you've gotten going you can start to sell nukes and those are the easiest to get started with because it's really you know just five frames of bees you have a frame or two of honey and the rest is brewed you want to make sure you have a new young queen in there that's laying that's healthy and it's stocked with bees you can buy those wax nuke boxes at mann lake and that's what i did it's a little under ten dollars per box when i bought them a few years ago i bought like you know a pack of 10 or 20 and and i just included that extra 10 in the cost some people will have like a 20 retainer and when you bring back the box they give your twenty dollars back my bees are not at my home they are on other people's properties and so it is not worth the time to schedule for people to come stop by and drop off their nuke box i'd rather you know if they buy more base from me i ask them if you still have your box and you want to bring it i'll take 10 off the price also if people bring their own equipment their own deep box with frames and lid and bottom board well not the frames i have have frames to for the extra space if they bring that with them i'll also take ten dollars off the price because i didn't have to add in the nuke box packages are a little bit harder because you're shaking the bees in there and you have to cage a queen but also another option another way you can make money educating people about bees is to become an influencer now this is like a long-term commitment because you're not going to have a hundred thousand followers on instagram or a whole bunch of views on your youtube page immediately but maybe if you actually already have these accounts going and pretty strong or a lot of followers in other areas it might be a whole lot easier for you but you can make money educating people online and then getting sponsorship from beekeeping supply places or through advertising on youtube some people have podcasts out and they will have a patreon page and then the listeners can donate whatever they um can to to your podcast and usually you'll offer something for free like extra special episodes to your patrons as a thank you or maybe you're giving them like a t-shirt or something as a thank you for helping them out and helping to contribute to their podcast and there is also books you can create your own ebook for free self-publish it and you can sell it through amazon and you can sell it through barnes noble and they will make a certain percentage of the profit and you make some of the profit you can even have a bookmate and you can sell it through amazon and they will you can have them fulfill it and you will make some of the profit and they make some of the profit now of course you have to get it printed you need a publisher or an ability of yourself to be able to print and create these physical books but you can also have an ebook made completely on your own and not have to deal with a publisher whatsoever now when it comes to this kind of stuff you really better be good at marketing or know how to get the word out about this because there are quite a few beekeeping books and there there's competition among the other other books out there to be the one that people choose to purchase after you've been doing it a couple of years this isn't for the beginner beekeeper but something that i do and works really well is people pay you to keep bees it's something that a lot of people don't realize is is a way that you can make money as a beekeeper but especially if you have the time one of the hotels here pays us to have bees on their property they already had bees on their property and then the person that did it left and the hives perished so we came in brought new bees out there and we go out there every other week and take care of their bees we also harvest the honey we harvest it into their jars put their label on it and they give their jars of honey out to people that come stay at their place there are a few companies that are actually a business that do this there are restaurants hotels and resorts schools there are quite a few places that would probably botanical gardens retreat centers there are places that would want beehives on their property but they don't have anyone to take care of them and it's too much to have somebody on staff that doesn't know anything to get into beekeeping unless it's something that maybe they're already like thinking about doing on their own so what you do is you just contact these places and introduce yourself and offer to put bees on their property for you know so much money a month and in exchange they get the honey they get the bragging rights they get the bees they get the free pollination they don't have to do anything um i i didn't go looking for this somebody contacted me about it but if i especially lived in an urban area i would this this would be a great business model you can put bees on the roofs of people's houses some people even just on their personal property would love to have bees but they don't have the time for it they don't want to put the work into it and so they would be willing to pay you to care for the bees if in exchange they're getting most of the honey if not all of it some places you can do different kinds of exchanges for the people that don't need bees on their property you know you're going to have to give them a little bit more to sweeten them up to make it sound like a good deal but i found especially for the resorts and the restaurants the people that could really like would love to have that those bragging rights and to be able to give out those little jars they make a really cute little one and a half ounce hexagon jar that is a really sweet little thing that um some resorts will give to people if they order tea that little jar of honey or a restaurant will give to you if you order a cup of tea and and things like that they really love so when bringing it up with some of these places you know get one of those jars fill it up with honey make a fake little label that just has the hotel's logo on it and says honey and stick it on there take a picture of it and send it to them it's a great way to you know get them thinking about doing something like that the and and the one hotel i was at when we were in the ho the elevator you know they had a poster up of a beekeeper opening up a hive and talking about how they have beehives on their property so it's a really great bragging right for some of these places to be able to tell the people that stay with them how they're helping the environment now of course there's pollination services here where we are in hawaii there's a beekeeper like every half of a mile so you don't make money offering pollination services there are queen breeders everywhere and they're desperate for places to put bees so nobody's paying for pollination but in a lot of the united states farmers are pretty desperate to for beekeepers to bring in their hives for pollination services and you can get quite a bit of money for this you can work for an apiary i got a job interning for a farm and then after that i contacted the farm down the road i asked to be a beekeeper and they said they didn't have any positions open but they did at their [Music] their farm shop which i started working at and it wasn't very long after i was taking care of bees and there was another guy there that was a beekeeper as well he got a job working in the warehouse doing honey packing and within a year he was also out working with bees as well so you might not get a job immediately as a beekeeper for the company but as long as they're aware that you that's where you want to go then you probably get a job shortly thereafter here in kona queen breeding operations are hiring beekeepers all the time you don't have to know much about bees in order to get a job as a beekeeper there but people don't stay for very long it's very long hours and really hard work and not great pay and then finally the last way that i've seen people make money as a beekeeper is through well not the last way but another way is venom therapy i don't know much about this except for once a woman came to the farm and asked if i would sting her she had arthritis very badly and so i did i didn't charge her for that once a woman came by she had lyme disease and every time they traveled they had to get like a whole little setup and they would buy bees and keep them inside this container and he would sting her every day and so i sold them some bees for 50 bucks some people do venom therapy you know they have like the bee house and everything and that is beyond my knowledge but another way to make money and finally the way that the farm i worked for made a lot of money from beekeeping was they just had tours so this was different than education and having classes this was it's ten bucks for an adult i think like seven or eight for a kid and under a certain age was free uh you got a discount if you were a veteran or lived in the state and we would it was an hour long first we had a video that showed the beekeeper out with the hives spinning the honey and doing things that you can't show people daily because you don't spend honey and bottle honey every single day but um so they had that little 10-minute video and they gave people a little cookie or something made with their honey and some tea sweetened with their honey and then we went out to the corral we called it and it was 10 bee hives that were fenced in just screened though open on the top and people stand on the outside and go on the inside open up a beehive show people some frames show them the queen and bees hatching what brood hunt looks like and what a honey looks like and open up some cells of honey so you can see it dripping down and then we would go in and do a honey sampling and then there was a shop for people to buy a whole bunch of stuff and we would max it at 15 people and it was it was they had three tours a day six days a week and it was it was almost maxed out and during the busy season now this is hawaii so get lots of tourists and that's definitely going to affect how popular your tours are and they would do free tours for class trips and some other associations but those tours did really well they got a lot of press through the magazines and local newspapers and it was a great source of income until kovit came along so if you maybe don't want to do b education that is another way to do like very minimal education and and reach a wider range of people just make sure you have a contract like something thrown up by a lawyer that people sign and the guardian or parent sign on behalf of kids under the age of 18 that says that you understand the risks of being around live bees if you can get an epipen great but it's really hard to get an epipen if you don't have a doctor you know prescribing it for you and just understand that there is that risk that people i would tell you this people that are highly allergic to bees will stop by and um you it's up to you whether you want to allow them on the tour or not but you really just want to make sure that they understand the risks of being around those bees i did those tours for years and there were only a few times that someone was stung and most of the time was actually by a wasp because the wasps kept on making a nest in the bamboo that fenced off the corral it was very rarely by a bee but still it can't happen and so sometimes people just don't even know if they're allergic or they bring their kids and they don't even their kids in their room been stung by a beam so a liability and something to consider but those are a lot of ways you can make money as a beekeeper as a beginner you can buy some honey and wax and start making products and use what a little bit you have yourself to start once you get going after a few years you can start teaching you can start selling bees you can start selling honey in bulk and wholesale to stores and um you know when you become a famous youtuber or instagram star let me know and we can tell me how you did it if you have other other ways that have worked for you post them in the comments i'd love to see what you guys are up to and what you're doing and as for me i stopped beekeeping has been my sole source of income for the last couple of years now i started with the classes classes led to selling nukes because most of the time if you want to take a class and they sell nukes i started out with the comb honey and i also get paid to take care of bees for that resort um and the combination of those really great brings in a great variety of different sources of income getting paid by somebody to take care of their bees is a nice um base that is a reliable source of income well wholesale accounts where we sell our honey is also great to bring in large chunks of money because you know you're getting paid a lot of money for giving them a whole bunch of cases of honey and then we have the classes just a few times a year now our online classes and the nukes for sale which is more of a seasonal thing and and is just an extra little way to increase our profits during certain times of the year when the bees are busy so if you have any questions leave them in the comments i try to answer all of them and if you want uh you know you're a beekeeper if t-shirt check them out at our website that is behappy hawaii.com link is down in the show notes we have them in blue and in gray and we have some kids t-shirts too that's a beekeeper in training and some onesies check them out thanks for watching bye [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Beekeeping Made Simple

Views: 4,007

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: make money beekeeping, sell honey, sell beehive, marketing your honey, how to sell your honey, how to start a bee farm, beekeeping business, how to make money keeping bees, beekeeper

Id: nA3wOffE2t8

Length: 31min 35sec (1895 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 23 2020