So our first hive is up and running, opened it up today and had a good look inside all looks as it should, well in my two weeks experience of bee keeping that is. We wanted a small business that would be truly local and could even carry on,even if money lost any value, we'd always find people willing to barter goods and skills for honey! Especially if sugar was in short supply
With that in mind we're building up a wee honey farm hopefully supplying local shops with honey and bees wax and even selling bee's!
Question is has anybody else thought about starting a business with the thought of being able to continue if it all falls apart?
Thats a good idea mongrel. Learning a skill that could be useful (and maybe profitable) is something I have been thinking about lately. Like you say Honey would be worth it's weight in gold and useful before and after an event but I don't fancy keeping Bees myself....too painful , I was thinking about learning how to weave Baskets, Lobster Pots, Traps etc
I am about to rain on your honey farm I am afraid. Sorry.
I looked into this about ten years ago and to be viable and bring in enough money to support a family as a sole business you need in excess of a thousand hives and access to large areas of land especially heather heath to produce a premium product, it is just not possible to compete with importers at the bottom end of the market.
During busy periods you will need up to another five employees with yourself but they will have to be casuals as the business would not support more than two full time staff. Capital for equipment is also high, hives, pumps, tanks, buildings, flatbed, etc.
There are spin off products such as propolis and wax which can keep up an income in the slack months but you are really reliant on a very seasonal crop. Also the true economic price of a jar of quality honey is now, and has been for a number of years, too high for most people to pay when you consider the capital and labour that have to go into it.
Also the legislative requirements are now horrendous (which is why I stopped selling honey and only gave it away). Batch tracing, weight, labelling, quality, (one grain of dandelion pollen in a jar of heather honey means that it must be sold as cheap mixed flower honey not expensive heather, and who can control where a bee flies?)
There is a reason why the small producer has vanished and Rowse has taken over and why people rarely sell at the farm gate these days.
As a way of generating pinmoney to help support another business it will work and is an enjoyable way of relaxing and produces a cash crop before others come in during the year when you have a little spare time. My Father-in-Law kept 30+ hives and took them to the heather every year but made very little from it, much less than carving walking sticks.
Why not look around for a local honey farmer, if there is one, and offer to help them with your skilled labour during the season and see the business from the inside?
You may be right in today’s economic measurement but the point is to have a means of supporting ourself if the shit happens. Up here in the highlands I know of three people making a living out of bee's including the one how sold me my swarm, each I know has less than 100 hives, average seems to be about 50.So despite your comments there are people doing it and making a living maybe not a great one! As a sole income for my family as things stand today, no, but as a means of producing trading good for barter be it wax, honey or mead I'll carry on with my bees.
Like my garden, work out the hours I labour to produce my veg and it's not worth economically worth it, but am I going to stop, not a chance!! Bee's are another support mechanism for my family, does that make sense?
mongrel wrote: As a sole income for my family as things stand today, no, but as a means of producing trading good for barter be it wax, honey or mead I'll carry on with my bees.
Like my garden, work out the hours I labour to produce my veg and it's not worth economically worth it, but am I going to stop, not a chance!! Bee's are another support mechanism for my family, does that make sense?
Makes absolute sense and well done for thinking about it. I talk to my husband about his 'retirement' income and what he could do instead of nursing. Something that might make some money or could be used to barter with (although I can't say that as he's not totally onboard with prepping!)
Please let us know how you get on as I would like to get a couple of hives just for us in the near future.
A friend of mine is a semi-commercial bee-keeper down Dorset way. As well as the usual apiary products, he has a lucrative line in bee venom that he sells to, I believe, research hospitals and pharmaceutical companies. Apparently bee venom may be useful in the treatment of arthritis. He commands several hundred pounds per gram and reckons that he can get a gram from 3 or 4 hives.
He has a wooden frame which fits over the open hive (National hives with deep (14" brood boxes). Over the frame is stretched a rubber cover that is stapled/tacked taut. He removes the roof and inner cover and puts the frame over the top bars and then rubs it with the sleeve of an old woollen jumper. This generates static (balloons, kids party's, stuck to walls - same principle) and, as any bee-keeper knows, bees hate static. They race up the hive and sting the rubber. You can see the stings appear and the small jet of venom shoot out. The rubber allows the sting to retract intact and over 2 or 3 minutes the static dissipates. By this time the venom has also dried on the upper surface of the rubber. He takes the frame off the hive and brushes the venom onto a piece of paper and then into a glass vial.
I have helped him with this several times and it is quite straightforward and only adds a few minutes to each hive examination.
, I was thinking about learning how to weave Baskets, Lobster Pots, Traps etc