# large scale apiary



## madness (Dec 6, 2006)

Ok folks, my neighbor stopped me this morning with an interesting proposition. It appears he has become highly interested in bees. He built the house next door to me and my bees caused some issues with their workers, so I'm surprised that he is giving them a second chance. But he is. He is actually interested in leasing land and putting up a bunch of hives to sell local honey. I honestly don't know much about large scale operations (he mentioned 100 hives but that was just a guess).

He is also interested in a partner - especially because the only thing he knows about bees right now is that if you put a concrete mixer next to the hives, the bees will sting you.  So he is wondering if I'm interested. And I'm wondering the same thing! 

So I'm looking for any and all information on beekeeping at this scale - how different is it than keeping 2 hives (besides the time involved)? How profitable is this sort of venture? I can't even think of other questions because this is so new to me!


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## Iddee (Sep 25, 2005)

I know nothing about the details of commercial beekeeping, but 30 years of reading and talking, I have learned that the accepted standard is this: At 300 hives, you quit your day job and make beekeeping your full time occupation.

Considering the cost of the woodenware for 300 hives would be in access of 30,000.00, without any bees, bought new, you might want to grow and learn slowly.
With trucks, extractor, jars, labels, ETC., you could easily tie up 50,000 in something you know too little about to make it work.

Just my .02


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## madness (Dec 6, 2006)

Thanks! That's just the sort of stuff that I'm looking for. I figured that 100 hives might be a bit much for a weekend once a month type operation - my neighbor was actually thinking you could check on the hives only twice a year!

I've been thinking about it and I would be willing to help him set up maybe 10 hives and see how we can manage that. If all goes well, the next year we could go up to 50 and then add more or not as time went on.


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## Elizabeth (Jun 4, 2002)

Where I come from 300 hives is considered sideline beekeeping. A full time beekeeper would likely have a minimum of 500-600 hives.

Besides the time involved in managing the hives, you need to consider the time and effort involved in selling the honey once you have it bottled. It is pretty easy to sell the honey from 20-30 hives, maybe even 50, but when your numbers start getting up there you need to work harder to sell the extra honey.

Best advice I can offer, besides growing slowly, is to go and help a commercial beekeeper for a week to see what it is like.


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## madness (Dec 6, 2006)

That's a great idea Elizabeth. I know of two very large scale honey operations right around here - each with about a thousand hives. It would be nice to find a "medium" scale one that would be similar to what we would eventually work towards if we did this. I'm sure they are around, I just need to find them!

We have a pretty active farmer's market here...but Round Rock Honey sells there and it might be hard to get much business. There are a few smaller markets that I don't think have any honey vendors. But that is certainly something to look into as well.

Keep the ideas and suggestions coming guys! This is just what I need to help me start looking into the right things. Thanks!


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## Mike in Ohio (Oct 29, 2002)

For me 25-30 hives is a reasonable quantity for a single location. We can get in and work them and be done.

We currently have 2 locations (not fully populated) and will be starting a 3rd next year. The first two are on our own properties, the 3rd one will be on a friends that is about halfway between our other two so we don't have to go out of our way at all.

As far as the leasing part, I have folks repeatedly asking me if I'll place hives on their property. Pollination services don't come cheap these days <G>.

Your neighbor is hallucinating if he thinks it's a twice a year effort. Just think about cleaning up old frames and hive bodies that mice or wax worms have gotten into.

Think about the number of supers you will be storing over the winter. 

We are running 25 hives and I know we could expand to 100 but I also know I'm always playing catch up now as it is.

Not to dissuade you but I don't think it is as easy as your original post implies.

Mike


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## madness (Dec 6, 2006)

I'm sure it's not easy at all! I just want to know how hard it's going to be! 

With what you say and what I've been reading today, it doesn't sound like 100 hives in a single spot is any good. That's good to know. So we are looking at multiple locations. So start with a single location for a year and then add more as needed. I can legally keep 8 hives on my property. Maybe we should just start off with that and see how that goes. If it's too much, we can bail and it wouldn't be too much skin off our hides. I know a few people that want to start colonies and they probably wouldn't mind a gift of a hive if I don't want to keep all eight!

Mike - how much time do you spend at your locations? I realize their is more work than just working the hives, but I'm so slow with my two hives and I don't have a feel for what a professional beekeeper can do in an afternoon.


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## alleyyooper (Apr 22, 2005)

One benifit of the high cost of fuel is the amount of time we spend looking/inspecting a colony of bees. We have to visit as many out yards as possiable in one trip now. BHFP, we went into a colony and searched for the queen, had to see her per the bosses wishes. Today we open the hive search for the queen but finding eggs in a good patteren it is closed up after the burr comb removal is finished. We could do a 10 colony yard in 8 hours BHFP, today we do 30 colonies in 3 yards in that amount of time.
I used to mess around with laying worker colonies, today we just load the colony up take it to a different yard and shake the bees out in the grass near some of the hives. We then take the frames home for freezing to rid them of the drone larva and the mites in the cells.
pulling the honey supers takes much time. You can do it many ways. Due to high fuel cost and not liking that honey robber products stink I just blow the bees out of the supers with a bee blower and when I get them to the honey house I sweep any remaining bees off before taking them in, I can do that after dark too. 
I also found selling the honey to be a big time robber. Storage till it is sold is some thing you have to really think about too. You can't just fill 100 pails and store them till they are sold. Unless you heat the honey it will granulate, some times fast, How are you going to get it liquid again? It has to be heated. The ideal thing is to have the honey sold before you extract. I know of no bee keeper that has been able to do that. Due to the low price of whole sale honey we have some left from 2006 and 2007. What we could make off the wholesale market would just barely cover the cost of fuel to get it there, TILL now since prices have climbed, doubled from last year.
 Al


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## Mike in Ohio (Oct 29, 2002)

Madness,

I don't know that I would call myself a professional. We do try to get in and ot of the hives as quick as possible. 

Because our hives are at our home or our farm it's a little bit different than if we were going to other locations besides our own. If we only do some of the hives at a time then we can always do the rest at a later point.

I do try to make things easier in terms of how we set the hives. I like to have plenty of room to work them from behind. At the farm we can pull up behind the hives with a trailer. This makes it easier for setting or removing woodenware, pulling honey supers, etc. Here is a link to a photo - http://members.aol.com/export4/farm_hives.jpg. there is about 40 feet of clear space behind the hives.

It also helps to have a large milk crate to set the upper hive body on.

We can get into a hive, clean off burr comb, check for good laying pattern, etc and be done in about 10 minutes. It takes longer if we are pulling honey. If we (DW and I) are really working together we can cut that down to about 5 minutes per hive if need be.

If you really want to learn how to work faster, spend some time with your local bee inspector. For them time is money and they don't want to waste time.

Expanding to 8 hives would be a good start in seeing if you really want to expand.

Just a few thoughts.

Mike


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## madness (Dec 6, 2006)

Thanks for the tips everyone.

I've thought a lot about this. I'm very interested in making my life as self sufficient as possible. To me, that means not getting involved in one single thing. I could probably be a beekeeper and use all my time doing that and use the money to support myself, but I doubt I could be a professional (even part time) beekeeper as well as raise my chickens and (hopefully soon) goats and grow a big vegetable garden. I guess I just want to stay diversified since I have a non-farm job that I love and don't plan on quitting to pursue an agricultural job.

But I'm thinking about moving up to 8 hives. If I can get faster at inspection (which I surely will with more practice and some tutelage from some old time beekeepers), I'm sure that 8 hives won't be much more than time I'm spending on 2 hives right now.

Thanks again everyone. It's nice to know that there are knowledgeable people at my fingertips that I can bug for info!


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## Durandal (Aug 19, 2007)

madness said:


> But I'm thinking about moving up to 8 hives. If I can get faster at inspection (which I surely will with more practice and some tutelage from some old time beekeepers), I'm sure that 8 hives won't be much more than time I'm spending on 2 hives right now.


I guess it depends on how you spend you time with your hives.

8 hives quadruples the amount of equipment you need and increases the logistical footprint in terms of storage of equipment too.

This is my first year, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. I started with four hives this year (nucs). As they were expanding I started collecting swarms (that took time but its a lot cheaper to catch them in the middle of a flow than buying I think). That all takes time, usually a couple hours, less if you already have the gear set up in advance and have space in the back of your car or truck to ALWAYS keep your gear.

Inspections...I figure 4 hours for me for right now, roughly 30 minutes per hive. I could do it faster and simply look for eggs, but I have killed two queens rushing and try to set aside I nice chunk of time to look them over.

Now I have an out yard that I built the other day. I have thought long and hard about this and have collected enough materials (for free mind you) to build at least 6 more stands. Building each stand takes time, collecting the material (in this case, metal roofing, lightweight steel I-beams and cinder blocks for the rack) does as well, as does negotiating and getting paperwork for the outyard (which adds 5.00 a year to my State registration costs too...per yard).

Now its no longer easy to go out and look at all the hives together. I need to plan better because I also have a run up the hill onto someone else's property. Its a singe hive right now, but the out yard is going to primarily for splits next year. My goal is to go into next winter (2010) with 20 healthy colonies.

I also grow produce, in addition to boarding 29 horses, and planting and harvesting 180 acres of corn and soybeans. I sell the honey at market. This year has been a good year locally for swarms and foraging, so even on my new hives and two of the early swarms I caught I have been able to rob a couple frames here and there, twice. So far I have sold a whole lot of honey (for me...its all relative) at a premium price. That takes time, as does getting people to know about you and either visit you at market or stop by your roadside stand. You have to get that honey too, that takes, time, as does extracting it (I have a simple tangential 2 frame extractor and its great for what I have right at this very second). It takes for ever to extract this way...not as much as crush and strain but you get the idea...lots of handling. I also use a comb pick and not a knife (trying to stay in budget this year). That takes time. Running it through a sieve filter to get out the big bits and then bottling takes some time too...organizing counting...little things, inconsequential things, but it all adds up. Like doing a spread sheet to track sales, gross receipts, costs per colony...all are absolutely necessary and take time.

I'd like to sell nucs eventually, that takes a whole lot of time (based on the amount of time it took for me to pick up my nucs from another beekeeper). 

If you start running a large apiary(ries) then you should also being raising your own queens. Its saves a whole lot of money in the long run.

Then there are all those other hive products...wax, pollen, propolis, etc. Different grades of wax. Melting wax filtering it, remelting to mold.

Do you make your own products and get a premium for your product? That takes time.

Then we are back to prepping for the next season.

So far I am loving it. I have spent a great deal of time so far, but the learning curve is massive. Little mistakes can be costly and time consuming.

I live 20 minutes from the center of a population of 2.5 million people so I have lots of local sales potential without heading into wholesale.

To date I have spent roughly 2.5 thousand on beekeeping since October of last year. Not including my time. I have sold nearly 400.00 of honey off 15 frames (4 taken during Black Locust flow and 11 taken later as wildflower started coming in) in three weeks. I should be able to gross a little over 500.00 with what I have left that is bottled. Most of the costs are depreciable assets which I can write off against a grain harvest and what is turning out to be an excellent hay producing year. I am not too sure it would be as easy to start up what I want to do without using the rest of the farm as a "cushion".

I cannot imagine leasing land, actually paying cash for it to put bees on it. I know its done, but usually as an end of season dumping ground for the migratory folks.

In the end, though, as I expand, I'll have all the same problems Alley mentioned in terms of bulk...if I go that far. Even with the huge population in my area, only so many people are willing to pay a premium for good honey (I have no idea what the ceiling is, but I sell at two markets and both have me and another beekeeper selling lots of honey simultaneously). I may just keep it small and simply enjoy it and never go commercial (which I consider, not by the number of hives, but by the reasons why I am doing it).

Edit: Sorry if this sort of drew on. I want to share my experience so far with some numbers to boot. I hope its helpful. I've loved every minute of it, even the frustrating parts where I found that I had no queen or found laying workers. I'll always keep bees, I am still out on how I will keep bees.


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## madness (Dec 6, 2006)

Thanks Richard!

I have a 50' x 30' building right next to my bee yard, so storage for 8 hives is really no big deal. I also have the small two frame extractor - hand powered at that. I would need a LOT more equipment if I wanted to go over 8 hives.

But at least I have some time to think about that even. I wouldn't get them until next spring. By then, maybe this pipe dream will be long forgotten  !


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## Terri (May 10, 2002)

Is this the guy who was harrassing you earlier?

Start a business if you will, but I think that I would choose a different partner!!!!!!!!!!! He's nuts!


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## madness (Dec 6, 2006)

It's the partner of the guy that was harassing me. It was such a weird situation. The one guy was a total nut job and the other guy was the nicest person I've met in a long time. This was their first - and last! - project together.

He has sorta been less interested lately. I think he realized how much work it would be. I'm still thinking about adding more hives, but I doubt anything will happen with this guy. I just don't think I'm interested in the scale that he's talking about. 8 hives would keep me plenty busy!


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