How To Become A Bee Farmer - Ten Simple Steps To Build A Successful Beekeeping Business

In this video, I'm going to give you the top 10 differences between hobby beekeeping and commercial beekeeping. It's amazing the amount of times this video has been requested, so I'm going to break it down. Top 10 differences between hobby beekeeping and commercial beekeeping. Hopefully there's some good tips in there for you if you're an aspiring hobby beekeeper looking to break into the commercial world. Number 1, time. Beekeeping takes an inordinate amount of time. It really does consume your entire life. So don't go into it thinking, oh, I'll do 20 hours a week and then I can spend the rest of the week down at Starbucks having a nice coffee. I do like Starbucks and I do go there quite a lot, but beekeeping takes so much of your time. Comparing that back into the hobby world, one of the comments that I get all the time is, how do you do your inspection so quickly? What do you look out for? If you're interested in finding out the answer to that one, I'm going to do a video on it this year showing you how I do my 5-minute inspection. Hit the subscribe button if you're interested in seeing that one. But I speak to a lot of hobby beekeepers and they say it takes me maybe 25-30 minutes to do an inspection, and they write the most detailed, incredible hive notes you've ever seen, and they've got a beautiful procedure for lifting the supers up and putting it down in the correct place, and you have to put the frames back the right way round and they can't cross over each other, and this is the hive that you do first, this is the hive that you do last, You kind of get where I'm coming from. Beekeeping as a hobby is so, so different to beekeeping as a commercial enterprise, and the biggest driver on all of that is time. So it depends where you are around the world, but generally you're looking at around between, say, 300 and 500 hives per FTE, so per full-time equivalent beekeeper within that business. I'm going to go off on a little bit of a tangent here because it does depend on your strategy for your business. So before you jump into the commercial world and say, right, I'm going to be a commercial beekeeper, beekeeping is going to be my job. I'd ask you the question, well, are you going down the bulk honey route? Are you going down the nuc route? Are you going to go down the queens route? Are you going to combine all 3 of those in some way? Are you going to specialize in hive products like pollen, propolis, royal jelly? What's your strategy? And you need to understand what your strategy is on day one, preferably before you go and buy all of your equipment. Don't do what a lot of beekeepers do, say, right, I'm going to be a commercial beekeeper, I'm going to buy 500 hives off Dave down the road because he's retiring, and then get into it after you've kept bees for a couple of and you're only really used to managing 2 or 3 colonies, and then realize just how much work managing that many colonies is. Do some research, speak to some people first. But jumping back to number 1 on this list, the time taken to do everything is like chalk and cheese. When you're a hobby beekeeper, you're doing it for fun, you're doing it as a leisurely activity, everything's nice and slow. When you're a commercial beekeeper, you're flipping that round and you're trying to be as efficient as you possibly can, getting everything done in the limited amount of time that you've got. Number 2, it wouldn't be a beekeeping business without talking about money. Now, I often hear this one thrown around saying if you want to make £1 million in beekeeping, you better start off with £2 million. And personally, my opinion on that is that is a load of rubbish. There is a good, good amount of money to be made in beekeeping if you're good at business. Look at people in the US. I know there's a little bit of reduction in prices on the pollination fees at the moment, but they get good money going and getting pollination contracts. Look at New Zealand. They sell manuka honey for 100 times what we sell our blossom honey for over here. I know they're the kings of marketing, but there's good, good money to be made in manuka honey. And then look at the UK, the queen market, the nuc market, the honey market, the hive product market, beekeeping equipment market. That seems to be where they make a decent amount of money as well. So although it's not a cheap hobby to get into, and it's certainly not a cheap business to get into, and the capital expenditure is quite high, there's good, good money to be made in beekeeping. I'm going to follow this point up in point number 10 on this video, give you a really good tip as to what not to do with money. Number 3 on the list, and this is a really key difference between the two, is compliance. And that word kind of sends shivers down my spine, because when you move from a hobby beekeeper into the commercial world, you need to comply with numerous legislation. So we're talking about health and safety at work, we're talking about food hygiene and labeling, We're talking about this Anti-Slavery Act, all of the stuff that comes with a business that you just don't really think about when you make that jump up from a hobby beekeeper to a commercial beekeeper. You're thinking about what size extractor am I going to buy and what social media channels am I going to have, but you get all of the compliance elements thrown in and you just don't see them coming, and it's one after the other. So what I would recommend is you're looking at making that step up, go and have a look at some general YouTube videos on how to remain compliant in any business form for your specific location, because that will really help you out, and it means that you're just prepared as you move into it. Number 4 on the list is insurance. Now, if you're a member of the British Beekeepers Association and you pay them the extra £2 or whatever it is, you get your bee diseases insurance and you get a little bit of product and public liability insurance as well. When you make that next step up, that insurance doesn't cover you as a commercial outfit. You need to go away and get separate insurance, and you can get separate insurance from some of the specific organizations that offer it. Don't discount it though, don't overlook it. You need very good specific insurance for your business. Right, number 5, some of the fun ones as well, marketing. As a hobby beekeeper, you might make 100, 200 jars of honey in a season. You extract it in September and then come October it's all gone. When you jump up that next level, and if you go up to, I don't know, 300 or 400 hives, and you work out how much honey you're actually sitting on throughout the year, you need to try and work out a marketing strategy that at least lets you compete with some of the major players in the industry. And we go back to that little bit at the beginning talking about strategy. How are you going to sell your honey? Is it even honey that you're going to look for? Are you going to sell it in buckets? Are you going to sell it in drums? Are you going to sell it in the smallest package possible? Are you going to package it up into little tiny jars and sell it to the hotel trade? Or are you not interested in honey and you're going to do hive adoption, you're going to do nucleus colonies, you're going to do queens? Or are you going to completely branch out and do propolis, royal jelly, and then make that into hand creams with beeswax? Your marketing strategy is a subset of your overall strategy. And should be kind of shoehorned into place depending on what you're trying to achieve. Comparing that to a hobby beekeeper, you might just put it on Facebook Marketplace and say, I've got 100 jars of honey here, first come first served, and then you're sold out within 2 weeks. Doesn't take much thinking about. But if you want to be a profitable business, you need to identify which avenues you're going to use for your marketing, and you need to identify your core customer base so that you can target them effectively. This is going to be a really hard one for people, and it was certainly a hard one for me. You need to learn from your losses, and you need to learn not to chase your losses. If you've got 1 or 2 hives in the garden and one of them dies, you've lost 50% of your beehives. It's really difficult, it's very hard to take, and it gets you down. As a commercial beekeeper, you just can't let that happen, and it's a game of numbers. So I'll use the example there. Say you've got 2 beehives in your garden, one of them turns into a bit of a drone-laying queen, or even a step worse than that, you found out that you've got laying Now if you're a hobby beekeeper, you might say, right, I've got 2 hives. One of them's doing okay, the other one's not okay. So I'm gonna steal, borrow, and beg some of the good stuff from the hive that's okay to try and remedy the hive that's not okay. I always say to people in this situation, do not do that. Do not chase your losses. Do not try and take away from the good to make the bad better. 'Cause inevitably what you end up with is 2 either average colonies, or one average and one dead colony. So when you move into a commercial world, you're changing things around completely. So I know some bee breeders, if they see 3 or 4 cells of chalk brood, that's it, the colony gets completely eliminated. The queen goes and they'll requeen it. If they find a colony that's got laying workers in it, instead of trying to add stuff in to save that laying worker colony, they just shake it out and they let that laying colony worker boost all of the other colonies around them. It's a cutthroat approach, but it means that you limit your losses and you learn not to chase them. It's a real difference from hobby to commercial, and you have to learn it pretty quick or you can get yourself in a bit of a sticky situation. Next on the list is trying to streamline your operation, and this comes down to the first 2 elements on this list: time and money. You don't want to spend your money on the most expensive piece of machinery because you think it's going to be the best, and you don't want to go and buy 40 of the most expensive beehives because they're going to be really fancy and look really nice. You need to get your business hat on. And you need to think about adding money into your operation to make it easier for you, but most importantly to give you a return on your investment. So whereas a hobby beekeeper, you might look at a nice long hive and think, wow, that long hive looks incredible, it's going to look nice in my garden, okay, it's expensive, but I'm going to get lots of enjoyment from it. When you're thinking about things from a commercial perspective, you're looking at it and thinking, how easy is that going to be to inspect? Is it compatible with all of my other equipment? How's that going to flow around my honey extraction room? Is there a cheaper material that I can use that's going to last for an equal amount of time? Should I be buying it painted or should I be painting it myself? Should I invest in a wax dipper because the £5,000 cost of the wax dipper is going to give me an extra 3 years working life on each of those boxes? You get fixed into this streamlined operation mode and it's a very healthy place to be. What can you improve? How much is it going to cost you to improve it? Are you going to see the return on the investment in a reasonable amount of time? Now the next one, we touched on it a little bit in section 1 talking about having a strategy, but I'm picking it out as a very specific— have a clear business plan with targets and goals along the way. You need to measure your success and you need to identify the areas where you're going to grow. So as I said, you might have a strategy to say, right, I'm going to be a 500-hive beekeeper and I'm going to sell honey in the drum. But then you might be thinking, well, hang on, I'm going to expand on that, and in year 3 I'm going to look to bring in some queen sales, and in year 5 I'm going to look to bring in some nuc sales as well. Detailing that clear business plan allows you to think ahead, allows you to buy equipment in bulk, and it gives flexibility in your operation, and it means that you can constantly track your success. But even more important than that, you can tweak things as and when they work or they don't work. I think this is the number one piece of advice for people. It doesn't matter if you've got 2 hives, 10 hives, or 50 hives. If you're looking to make that next step up, work out what that step up is. Don't buy anything, don't talk to anyone, don't do anything until you've got a really clear business plan in place. If you're a hobby beekeeper, your business plan might be, today I'm going to go and do a half an hour bee inspection, have a lovely coffee, and watch my bees flying in and out of the hive. That to me sounds like absolute bliss. And then the final one, number 10, and I told you I was keeping a very important one right until the end of this video. My advice to you, do not go into debt. Do not look at beekeeping and think, that's going to make me lots of money. I'm going to take out a loan for £100,000 and I'm going to buy X amount of beehives, this big fancy shiny extractor and all of the equipment. I'm going to buy a new pickup truck and then in the first year I'm going to pay all of that off and I'm going to pay myself a nice tidy wage. Beekeeping, especially in the UK, is incredibly volatile. If it rains all the way through the year and you're a honey farmer, you are going to struggle. You're not going to be able to pay off your debts, and you're probably not going to be able to pay yourself a salary. I hate to think of anybody going into debt due to beekeeping. So have a really clear business plan and have a cash flow forecast which shows when you're going to take money out of your business to buy certain things, and when you're going to have money coming into your business, maybe at certain times of the year when you get your honey crop in, or during the summer months when you're selling your queens, or early in the spring when you're selling your nucs. You can build up that revenue very, very quickly over, say, 3 to 5 years, and you'll soon realize that the money coming in can be spent at the right time to invest and grow your business. It is so volatile. I hate to see anybody go and invest a lot of money buying into a beekeeping business and then for the weather just to be so bad and for it to completely flop. So definitely don't do that. If you want to know more and you're interested in learning more about how you can make money in beekeeping, I've done a 2-part special showing how you can make that money, and the link to the video is here.