How Much Do Beekeepers Make?
How much do beekeepers make per hive? With as few as two successful hives, you can recover expenses to get into the hobby and pocket a little extra cash.
Making an income from honeybees is often not why folks get into beekeeping. Most will say they only got into bees because they wanted to help the bees and their garden. Mention making money to these beekeepers, and you’ll likely get a sideways glance telling you the bees aren’t about money. But did you know that with as few as two successful hives, you can recover every expense incurred just to get into the hobby and pocket a little extra cash? Even better, with only five healthy colonies, any beekeeper in any region can not only allow the bees to pay for themselves, but their bees can quickly pay for a nice family vacation. Here’s how:
How Many Colonies?
The good news about making extra cash with our honeybees is that not many colonies are needed. The trick is first to ensure you can keep your bees not only alive but healthy and thriving, as well. The healthier a colony is throughout the year, the more productive it can and will be during its entire productive cycle. This equates to not only more bees to keep the process going but also more products, more sales, and more income.
However, as with all things in life, the final outcome depends largely on how active you are with your bees. This includes proper and timely inspections and interventions such as varroa control and feeding schedules, as well as marketing and product development.
First Things First
So, you know you can sell your raw honey. However, the act of selling honey isn’t what makes a beekeeper any form of income. To be successful and reap the maximum benefits from both your time and that of your bees, you must first be willing to slap a price tag on that labor-intensive honey that justifies the work you put into it. Honey isn’t cheap. If it is, it’s likely not honey or the beekeeper undervalues their efforts. So don’t go cheap.
Why? Because most discerning customers don’t seek the cheapest product but seek the best local honey. So place that high-priced sticker on that jar with pride and explain to the customer how much work goes into producing the jar of luscious liquid gold. You’ll likely be surprised at just how much people will invest in top quality products they believe in. So sell it as a high-end product. Your time and your bees’ time is worth it.
What to Sell?
The fascinating aspect of selling products from a honeybee colony is that there’s usually at least one product that each beekeeper enjoys producing. For many, this is nothing more than raw honey. For others, it may be creamed (or whipped) or comb honey. Still others take delight in adding flavorings to their honey, such as cinnamon, lemon, and even hot spices. And to sweeten this deal even further, anytime a change is made to the honey, be it flavoring, whipping, or adding a piece of comb, the final price goes up — happy day for both bees and beekeepers alike.
In addition to honey, many value-added products, such as beeswax-based candles and soaps, body lotions, lip balms, foot creams, facial moisturizers, and even bath soaks, are created and sold by hobby beekeepers. For many, these very products keep their beekeeping hobby financed and the non-beekeeping spouses from complaining about how much time and money goes into their partner’s hobby.
nuc sales as an excellent tool for swarm control. It’s better to sell those bees that want to swarm than to lose them to the trees.
However, honey and candles aren’t the only products beekeepers can sell. Miniature colonies, called nuclei (AKA nucs), are a high-demand product, especially in the springtime when new beekeepers and old alike seek their first sets of bees or replacement colonies to replace winter losses. Even better, most regions tend to run short of demand, allowing nuc producers, no matter how small, to keep their prices higher to offset the steadily increasing costs of nuc production.
Maybe you think you’re too small to make nuclei to sell? Nothing could be further from the truth. In my second spring in beekeeping, I sold a whopping 10 nucs to fellow beekeepers. Even better, selling those 10 nucs took little effort. All I needed was a nice social media post sent to several of our local beekeeping organizations’ pages, and every nuc was spoken for within a single day.
But the best part of selling nucs — besides the extra cash — is the inherent swarm control that arises from pulling a few frames of bees, with or without the queen, and selling them off as nuclei. I especially enjoy this approach when I have a season where increases aren’t needed or wanted. So, if you have too many colonies or swarms for your preferences, consider selling a few nucs to offset a healthy colony’s growth each season.
Regardless of how many colonies you may have, there are ways to generate even a small income worthy of your time. The trick is determining what you’d enjoy creating and selling and how much time you’d like to invest. At a bare minimum, any successful hobby beekeeper can recover their operating expenses, while those more inclined to create a successful income stream can go on vacation at the very least. It’s all in what you’d like to accomplish with your bees.
Additional Income Streams from the Hive
While most beekeepers opt for the more traditional honey, candles, and nucs for extra bee money, other options are still available and worth exploring. Here are just a few:
Education
- Teach others about beekeeping
- Beekeeping classes — both in the bee yard and in the classroom
- Write beekeeping articles
Services Provided
- Managing others’ bees
- Extracting others’ honey
- Small-scale pollination services
- Pre-assembled or painted equipment
- Bee removals — check local regulations first
Value Added Products
- Candles
- Soaps
- Lotions
- Lip balms
- Bath bombs
- Herbal products
- Propolis tinctures
Others share their knowledge with local bee organizations. And others teach through writing. If you have a gift for teaching, don’t be afraid to use it for teaching beekeeping.
How Much Do Beekeepers Make Per Hive?
Even if you don’t like math, a little bee math is necessary to help determine what a beekeeper may expect from each colony. Just remember these numbers are an example of what’s possible, not a guarantee of what each beekeeper can expect. However, these numbers are relatively consistent across regions. They’re a good place to begin when determining if managing your bees for any income level is worth your valuable time. Be aware, however, that some regions incur lower price points while others may be able to obtain as much as twice the given amounts.
Example #1: Raw honey only: In many regions, a healthy colony on good forage can produce at least 60 pounds of raw honey (and often much more) in a given season. Sixty pounds of raw honey equates to:
3 pounds of honey per quart = 20 quarts per colony
At $25.00 per quart (this is a LOW price; many of us get as much as $30 or more) = $500 per colony
= $1,000 for every two colonies
Example #2: Now, let’s increase the value of the honey, as mentioned earlier, with nothing more than a bit of whipping (and a nice tasting starter) to create a new product — whipped or creamed honey. This form of honey goes for even more than standard raw honey and is typically packaged in smaller 8-ounce jars, often of the decorative type. What makes these little gems worth nearly any beekeeper’s time is in the final price tag. Here’s a quick look to compare the differences between raw and whipped honey. Sixty pounds of raw honey equates to:
80 (8 ounce) jars of whipped honey
at $15 per jar (many regions get as high as $20 or more per jar)
= $1,200 per colony
=$2,400 for every two colonies
Example #3: Let’s combine a few solid numbers to see what the average hobbyist can expect out of five colonies. This beekeeper specializes in whipped honey only, adding a single nuc per colony for swarm control. Let’s see what these numbers show us:
60 pounds honey per colony = 300 pounds of honey
= 80 jars of whipped honey per colony
= 400 jars for five colonies
=at $15 per jar
= $6,000 in whipped honey for five colonies
PLUS a single nuc per colony at $200 per nuc
=$1,000 in nuc sales
Grand total:
$6,000 in whipped honey
$1,000 in nuclei
=$7,000 for five colonies
A Word About Beeswax, Pollen, Propolis, and Queens
Regardless of operation size, many beekeepers eagerly explore every product their colonies can produce. Among these products are beeswax, pollen, propolis, and queens. The downside to these products is the size of the operation required. It takes many colonies to produce sufficient quantities of any of these items — especially queens, beeswax, and pollen. Good quality queens require lots of bees, and colonies must keep much of their pollen and propolis for food and overall colony health. So, to succeed with these items, larger numbers of colonies are often needed.
Here’s an example of how the numbers work just on beeswax alone to give an idea of what the numbers look like.
Beeswax, on average, ranges from $10 to $16 per pound.
Each colony typically produces no more than about 1 pound of beeswax for every 100 pounds of honey.
For every 20 colonies = 12,300 pounds honey
= 12 pounds beeswax
= at $10 to $16 per pound = $120 to $192
It’s not the best source of extra income, but a very nice source of personal beeswax ready for soaps, candles, lip balms, and more.
Kristi Cook lives in Arkansas where every year brings something new to her family’s journey for a more sustainable lifestyle. She keeps a flock of laying hens, dairy goats, a rapidly growing apiary, a large garden, and more. When she’s not busy with the critters and veggies, you can find her sharing sustainable living skills through her workshops and articles.
Originally published in the January/February 2025 issue of Countryside and Small Stock Journal and regularly vetted for accuracy.
