Make THOUSANDS of DOLLARS as a beekeeper! ( with only a few hives)

hey everybody welcome back in today's video we're going to talk about how a small time bee keeper like yourself can make money every year and keep on expanding and enjoy beekeeping as a passionate hobby that makes you some extra money [Music] okay welcome back everybody tom here from the whistle ticket channel hanging out with bubba and of course we're away from the bees so he doesn't get stung so i've been a beekeeper for about six years now and i'm making money i'm enjoying beekeeping there's lots of reasons to be a beekeeper but a lot of people struggle making money and how to do it so i'm gonna share some of the secrets i've learned over six years how a small time beekeeper can make money and enjoy beekeeping now a small time beekeeper to me is someone that this is not your full-time job i have 11 hives right now um that to me is still kind of a you know a medium-sized beekeeper if you have more than you know 20 hives you're probably investing a lot of energy into beekeeping i'm a little background about me i'm a school teacher i have a family i do a lot of other stuff on the homestead i do maple syrup elderberry stuff so beekeeping is just one of the things i'm passionate about um i don't want to get bigger than about 12 hives until i retire as a school teacher in like 15 years or so so that's my story now let's talk about how to make money as a small-time beekeeper first and foremost and this is really important i think it's in the very beginning of your beekeeping journey you want to grow sustainably what that means to me you're not going to start off with 10 highs your first year or even 5 hives you're going to start off with two hives and grow sustainably every year i've expanded i've gone from two hives to two hives to five hives now i have 11 hives i actually had 12 hives and i actually sold one of them because i just wasn't ready for that extra hive and i know next year i'm probably going to expand so this is what's important try to make money and i'm going to tell you how i make money with beekeeping but try to make money each year to at least break even and i almost guarantee if you don't expand too quickly you'll not only break even but you'll make some money and then that third or fourth year you're start you will start to make a profit so only start with um really two hives and also your equipment you can get stuff used as long as you're inspecting it i don't really buy used frames but use boxes as long as i know the the beekeeper personally i don't have a problem buying used wooden wear um a lot of my protective equipment i actually got for christmas for gifts for birthdays so let your family and friends know hey i'm getting into beekeeping and they will actually buy you some stuff to get you started um the next thing bees bees are expensive around me it's a hundred and thirty to 150 dollars for a package of bees a nuke is 175 to 200 so if you can save money on bees then that's gonna help your overall expenses um swarm trapping is a great way to get free bees so it it's kind of a next level skill um several of my hives this year are swarms those were free hives um so that right there helps with my bottom dollar so if you can catch swarms that's a great great way to um get into beekeeping a lot um cheaper you can also talk to some local beekeepers and this is what you may not know as a new beekeeper if your hives are successful in the winter you are probably going to have to split that hive and your your hive is all or your ap area is always going to be expanding not necessarily double but it's going to probably be close to that you will probably lose some hives in the winter but if most of your hives make it most of those hives you're going to split most of my highs this year are splits and i did buy two packages but i have a role i never will ever buy more than two packages per year that is just my personal rule um i don't want to invest more than that and bees if i don't have a great winter then i just i'm gonna have to build up my apiary and catch some swarms so if you can lower your up front costs that's going to help you profit in the end so that's a major major tip to get started [Music] most of the time your first year as a beekeeper you may not get a lot of honey sometimes no honey i know people that haven't got honey until their third year as a beekeeper but let's say you're successful you finally got honey you want to sell that honey what are you going to do where are you going to sell it a quick breakdown for me this is rough estimates but out of all of my honey every year about 60 percent of the honey i sell myself at farmer's markets at craft fairs i even have people that show up to the farm local folks to buy honey directly to me from me so that's about 60 of my honey sells the other um 30 or so i sell in stores i usually do a 70 30 split with them and stick to that because honey's gonna sell it's gonna sell at the store they're gonna make quick money you're still gonna make a decent profit and you don't have to be a big a big beekeeper to sell in a store even when i had two hives i sold in local stores so don't be afraid to approach you know a health store even you know kind of a niche market store an antique store it doesn't necessarily have to be a food place people will buy honey from you if it's a consignment store you never know don't be afraid to go talk to people the other 10 i keep for myself for friends and family so that's kind of a breakdown of what i do but don't be afraid to approach stores don't be afraid to go to a farmer's market even if you don't have a lot of honey because i almost promise you well i do promise you honey will sell okay so now we're going to talk about your actual products you know where to sell farmers markets selling in stores even i have people come to the farm i've even sold out of the back of my car i've had people come to my work to get honey honey is going to sell people but you really want to diversify your products as much as you can now most of the time we're talking about honey but there's lots of other products besides honey there's value added products and there's other products you can get from your bees that sometimes as a new beekeeper you don't think about so honey of course and that's what we'll mainly be talking about but you can sell bees people you can sell bees i sold my first um nuke this year my first hive and that's a great way once you become established because i don't really want more than 12 or 15 hives but with a healthy hive you're probably going to have to split it in the spring and if you don't want to keep expanding you can sell that you can also sell queens which i haven't got into queens queens don't take a lot of um space so if you have a small property you could actually make quite a bit of money raising queens again i haven't gotten into that but i may in the next few years you can also sell wax i sell a little bit of wax and i also do value added products with that wax that i'll talk about in a little bit and also propolis and pollen now i want to be honest with you i haven't sold those yet i'm going to start making some tinctures out of the propolis um and probably next year i'm going to start collecting a little bit of pollen see if people are interested in that so those are the things you can sell honey being the main one so let's talk about that you don't have one product people you have lots of products with honey it's all about bottling and if you're smart you probably have a couple different harvests in your area i have a wildflower harvest in the spring sourwood in the summer and if i'm really lucky i have goldenrod and i sell all the way down from this small bear up to big mama this is a half gallon people and people are buying this and i'm even doing cut comb ross rounds so don't be afraid to experiment it's all about the bottling um let me go ahead and show you my setup at my local farmer's market i've been doing this summer okay so this here is my farmer's market setup and i have two types of honey i have sour wood honey and i have wildflower honey and that's a really big key is most beekeepers are probably going to have several types of honey in their area so if you're a good beekeeper you can market that and you can also see that i have a lot of different types of bottles i sell my smallest bottle is three dollars and fifty cents and that's a plastic bear and then i actually this year have gone all the way up to a half gallon um and that's 45 dollars and these prices are still pretty reasonable a lot of other beekeepers are more expensive in my area than i am but i try to have fair prices and i want everybody to experience a little bit of honey and you can also see i have some you know nice bottles here some fancy bottles some basic mason jars because it's all about the presentation if you can show your product to a customer in a very clean presentable way then you're more likely to sell and if you are selling at a farmers market especially if you have several honey varieties having a little tasting station is a great way to draw customers in and to make more sales so i hope you enjoy that little tidbit there and um yeah i had a tasting station that really has helped me at first i didn't have a tasting area but people that taste are more likely to buy i found and a lot of people haven't had sourwood honey where i'm at sourwood is a very local honey and i get a lot of tourists from florida and other places that want that sour wood so having a tasting is a really great addition to selling a farmers market so i am going to talk honestly and tell you how much i've made this year i made about 2 000 people and i'm in the middle of selling stuff right now so i i i expect to make maybe three thousand dollars so i'm pretty excited um i have about 50 pounds in stores right now that i just dropped off i got another 20 pounds in the house i'm i'm looking at my bee yard from the porch here and i probably have another 50 pounds of honey to harvest maybe more and if i'm really really lucky i'll get a fall harvest a goldenrod so i think i will easily break three thousand dollars and this is how i also do it in the fall i'm not going to focus too much on it on this video but in future videos um you'll see some of my value added products so in the fall and winter i do two farmers markets i do lip balm i do candles from candle molds i do a hand moisturizer this is all using beeswax and the great thing about beeswax is very valuable and useful but you don't need a lot of it to make these products so those are three products i'll be doing that i've done in the past and this year i'm also going to do fermented garlic honey i'm going to do mint infused honey i'm going to do elderberry syrup and i'm going to try to make these little honey stirrers for tea drinkers and coffee drinkers and actually honey suckers too so the value added products i don't focus on until after honey season because it's a lot of work but in the fall when things start to calm down i'm going to start making these products and those are really going to kind of set me apart at these farmers markets because i'm not making lots of these but it draws people to the farmers market so i really hope you enjoyed this video i'm going to keep on beekeeping i hope you do the same and if you're interested in beekeeping i really um suggest you give it a shot it really is a great a great journey and uh i can't wait to see what the future holds thanks for joining us

Channel: Whistle Thicket

Views: 64,298

Keywords: beekeeping, making money, making money from beekeeping, how to make extra money, side businesses, honey, selling honey, beeswax, propolis, selling bees, queen bee, backyard bees, how to sell honey, beekeeping secrets

Id: nWsS7HwlHMg

Length: 14min 8sec (848 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 15 2021