hey there larissa from beekeeping made
simple and this video is about different
ways you can make money
from your bees and honey and if you're
just looking for
a list of ideas um i make easy for you
right in the description below i have
like bullet points and all of them
listed below
but here in this video i'm going to talk
about the ways that have worked for me
for making an income i'm going to talk
about ways that
commercial apiaries i worked for on a
larger scale
made in income versus other ways you can
do it on a small scale
and as a beginner maybe even in your
first or second year
how you can make some money from
beekeeping
because it is possible even your first
year you can still produce
some income and getting started isn't
cheap so is
a great way to offset the cost of
beekeeping
is to sell some of the products you
harvest from your hive
now the first way you can make money as
a beekeeper
is by selling your honey obviously
that's a big one and an obvious one
but there are different ways that you
can do that so you have
different honey products you have your
liquid honey
which you might have different varieties
uh depending on if you're harvesting
in the early summer or the late summer
or if you're in a place that has
year-round
beekeeping you might even have a fall or
winter honey
you also have honeycomb you also can
cream your honey
you can make infusions you can add
rosemary and garlic and infuse those
flavors into your honey or you can make
confections you
can add cacao you can add ground coffee
cinnamon vanilla chili peppers there are
so many things you can add to honey to
make a variety of honey products
so as a beekeeper a small scale
you can sell a variety of these honey
products
in a variety of sizes retail or
wholesale
what i worked for a large honey packing
company
and so they're different than beekeepers
they don't have hives or maybe they have
a few
but what they mostly do is they buy
honey in bulk
put it into smaller jars and sell at
retail so a lot of the large
beekeeping companies they don't have
really their own label
most of what they're doing is putting it
into barrels
which is over 600 pounds of honey and
they're selling it
as a barrel to a honey packing place
or maybe to a beverage company or
they might be selling five gallon
buckets which is about 60 pounds of
honey
to a bakery or a resort or a restaurant
and so one way when you're thinking
about selling your honey you want to
think about
how you want to sell your honey and what
you have usually
what your options you're going to be
limited with your options if you only
have one or two beehives obviously
you're not going to be selling a barrel
of honey
so what you want if you don't have a lot
of honey to sell
is to think of ways to sell it at a
premium cost
now that might be adding something like
cacao
or chili peppers or something to make a
confection to make it seem like a
specialty product
and then you can raise the price of it
or if you have a specific blossom honey
that your bees are gathering um maybe
you have tupelo
or mesquite or here in hawaii we have
the lihua and the kiawe and those are
honeys that go at a premium price
so you can sell less of it but make more
money a honeycomb is what we primarily
do here
and that also goes for a premium price
almost twice as much as what a liquid
honey goes for
and so if you don't have a lot of honey
think of ways you can make it a little
bit
increase the price of it and if you have
a lot of honey
then great ways to sell it are to
sell it in bulk um
now when first getting started if you
have enough honey that you can sell to
people even if it is just a few cases
retail like direct to customers the best
way to go start with friends and family
and bringing it to work if your
place of employment allows it i wouldn't
go wholesale until you know that you can
fill those large orders because once you
get
a wholesale account you don't want to
have to cancel it with that store
because then it's really hard to get it
back
a lot harder than getting the wholesale
account in the first place
so you have your honey
um and if you don't have a lot of honey
another thing you can do is go to a bee
farm and actually just buy their honey
in bulk
and fill it and that's what one farm i
worked for did they had some coffee
trees they had some
they had a 1 point 130 bee hives
some macadamia nut trees but mostly what
they did was they bought these products
in bulk from farmers down the road
and they put it in their packaging and
some people look down on this but now
that i've worked for companies like this
there is no reason to think that this is
bad now obviously don't put on your
packaging that
all of this comes from our bees or you
know make up some fake story don't lie
to people
but there are a lot of farmers
that have a lot of product and they
don't know how to sell it they don't
know how to market it they would rather
sell it in bulk for a cheaper than
to have to deal with the bottling and
the wholesale accounts and all of that
stuff
so if you're just getting started and
you've managed to get a wholesale
account
or your honey's selling out and you
can't keep up with demand
i would not feel bad about going to
another bee farm and seeing if you can
buy
their honey in bulk in like five gallon
buckets or so
and bottling it in your bottles don't
lie to people and tell them that
all of this came from your beehives but
there's nothing wrong with doing that
and it's a great way to make a little
bit of extra money to help pay for more
beekeeping equipment so that you can
have more beehives and be able to
harvest more honey
later on in a few years
so another way that you can um
make a profit as a beekeeper is with
your beeswax
you can sell beeswax just solid chunks
of beeswax first you want to render it
which is
how you separate the
wax from the honey and the propolis
you want to turn it into a solid chunk
of wax and not sell the comb
and you can sell it just like that there
are places
you can sell through amazon you can sell
through etsy you can sell through ebay
um you could sell at farmer's markets
you can sell
through social media or email your
friends and family
actually um there is a
a website called ubersuggest
u-b-e-r-s-u-g-g-e-s-t
the link is in the show notes and on
there you can type in a keyword and
you'll see how many people google that
keyword
so you can if you put in
um buy beeswax
or buy beeswax near me or buy beeswax
and the city you live in or the state
you live in you'll see how many people
are searching that and there are
actually quite a few people
as of when i checked it yesterday that
are googling how to buy beeswax
so it's actually a product that a lot of
people look for
all you want to do is get one of those
molds so that you have like a nice mold
that says
maybe beeswax on it the little you can
buy the mold that would make it into one
ounce blocks or the one pound box
in a pinch you can use silicone ice cube
trays work really well too
you can pour your beeswax into there and
those
are that's an easy way to sell your wax
but
if you want to if you don't have a lot
of wax then just like
with bulking up your honey to increase
the price
a way you can do that with wax is making
products out of your wax
if you have a lot of wax you can just
sell it in blocks but if you don't have
a lot of wax
you can make candles out of it you can
make
lotions and other kinds of body products
and you can make those beeswax wraps
which
through that uber suggests you you'll
see that there are a lot of people
that google buying beeswax wraps and
it's
a really popular thing that people want
to purchase now and basic swag
for those of you that don't know it's
it's kind of like an alternative to
cellophane
it's reusable you're really just taking
fabric and you're dipping it
um in beeswax you add some jojoba oil
and
a few other things to it and and it's
it's similar to
cellophane or a ziploc bag except it
doesn't it's not it doesn't hold liquids
or anything
um lotions are another really popular
one and the price of lotions
varies quite a bit it's i mean you'll
find some lotions that are very
end and cost a lot of money and some
that are considerably cheaper
chapstick or lip balm those are is
usually the most
popular item that everyone wants to buy
you can
actually add honey and beeswax to your
soaps if you want if you make soaps
i make a psoriasis eczema cream with
beeswax in it i make um belly butter
for women who are pregnant with beeswax
in it a healing salve
um it's really endless the different
kinds of lotions you can make with
beeswax
now you don't make as much of a profit
with
the body products because there's a lot
that you have to purchase there's very
little beeswax
in these products if you put too much in
your products going to be
really waxy and hard and
most people want it a little bit more
oily so it's smoother to go on their
skin
but if you don't have a lot of wax
and then that is really the best way to
start as a beginner
if you're looking to go to a farmer's
market or a festival or sell some things
to family
or just want to make presents for family
and friends really
and again with the beeswax wraps that
doesn't
um require a lot of wax either
candles now that's almost pure beeswax
and you can buy a candle mold for you
know 10 to 20 dollars a lot of
beekeeping supply websites have them
i made my own candle mold which you can
do as well
um but it's a little bit more expensive
to do that usually it's about 30 bucks
for you to make one candle mold and i
use the
umu which is also in the
description down below in the show notes
and again you can buy beeswax
you can buy it from a local farmer in
bulk
the farm i worked for they actually sold
a
30 pound blocks of it for fairly cheap
and then you could use that for body
products and candles
and you know it's a great it's just good
to know that you have a backup plan if
you start to run out of product
you can go somewhere else and and source
this material
until you have more from your bees
once you have you know some products to
sell
a great way to increase that final
sale whether you're doing it at a market
or
online or through an etsy shop or
whatever is to
make some additional be love
products is what i call them um we sell
t-shirts
like the one i'm wearing right now it's
plain blue on the front
but on the back it's uh you might be a
beekeeper if
uh on the back with a bunch of things
that we came up with
my favorite one being you might be a
beekeeper if your first pound of honey
costs you six hundred dollars
but um you can have uh
t-shirts with any design you want made
on demand they're they're actually
printed one by one
through a program called printful if you
have a shopify website and the link to
that is
in the description down below you can
buy sticker paper or go to a print shop
and have the stickers made
of um your logo oh and then there is
also propolis so there's not a ton
that you can do with propolis some
people do bipropyl just straight out
but mostly i see tinctures made with
propolis and
they might be sold as a throat spray or
added to some
body products
in my opinion if you really want that
wow factor
the reason why people will buy a body
product adding royal jelly sometimes
attracts people's attention i haven't
found that people
will buy something because it has
propolis in it or
i haven't found that purples makes
people more likely to buy a product
but so i haven't found that it's worth
it nor have i found that it makes
products better other than the throat
spray which is pretty much just a
propolis tincture
but it is something that you can play
around with if you like
now okay so then
aside from all of those products you can
sell
knowledge you can give a beekeeping
class i don't recommend this if you're
just in your first or second year
beekeeping don't don't go
making beekeeping classes i mean you can
maybe make like a
a class at a at a school where it's just
an introduction to basin beekeeping
where you explain like how to get
started
and the basics of what goes on in the
hive and
and things like that like a very basic
introduction but don't sell full
beekeeping classes until you really know
what you're doing
and also you can sell bees you can sell
packages
nucleus hives or just the queen bee
usually to start what people do is they
sell
a nuke and i wouldn't do that your first
couple years either you really want to
make sure you have a good stock before
you get into that
which means you know you're you're
spending
seasons with the bees you're seeing
which ones have high
mite infestations and which ones seem to
manage it
fairly well on their own you want to see
which ones are aggressive and which ones
are a little bit calmer
and and start to breed a good stock
before you
get into selling nukes so that's not a
beginner option
but i um once you've gotten going
you can start to sell nukes and those
are the easiest to get started with
because it's really you know just five
frames of bees you have a frame or two
of honey and the rest is brewed you want
to make sure you have a new
young queen in there that's laying
that's healthy and it's stocked with
bees you can buy those wax
nuke boxes at mann lake and
that's what i did it's a little under
ten dollars per box when i bought them a
few years ago
i bought like you know a pack of
10 or 20 and and i just included that
extra 10
in the cost some people will have like a
20 retainer and when you bring back the
box they give your twenty dollars back
my bees are not at my home they are on
other people's properties and so it is
not worth the time
to schedule for people to come stop by
and drop off
their nuke box i'd rather you know if
they buy more base from me
i ask them if you still have your box
and you want to bring it
i'll take 10 off the price also if
people bring their own equipment
their own deep box with frames
and lid and bottom board well not the
frames
i have have frames to for the extra
space if they bring that with them i'll
also take
ten dollars off the price because i
didn't have to add in the nuke box
packages are a little bit harder because
you're shaking the bees in there and you
have to cage a queen
but also another option
another way you can make money educating
people about
bees is to become an influencer now this
is like a long-term commitment because
you're not going to have a hundred
thousand followers on instagram
or a whole bunch of views on your
youtube page immediately
but maybe if you actually already have
these accounts going and pretty strong
or a lot of followers in other areas it
might be a whole lot easier for you
but you can make money educating people
online
and then
getting sponsorship from beekeeping
supply places or through advertising on
youtube
some people have podcasts out and they
will have a patreon page and then
the listeners can donate whatever they
um can to
to your podcast and usually you'll offer
something for free like extra special
episodes
to your patrons as a thank you or maybe
you're giving them like a t-shirt or
something
as a thank you for helping them out and
helping to contribute to their podcast
and there is also books you can create
your own
ebook for free self-publish it
and you can sell it through amazon and
you can sell it through barnes noble
and they will make a certain percentage
of the profit
and you make some of the profit you can
even have a bookmate
and you can sell it through amazon and
they will you can have them fulfill it
and you will
make some of the profit and they make
some of the profit now of course you
have to get it printed you need a
publisher
or an ability of yourself to be able to
and create these physical books
but you can also have an ebook made
completely on your own and not have to
deal with a publisher whatsoever
now when it comes to this kind of stuff
you really better be good at marketing
or know how to get the word out about
this because there are quite a few
beekeeping books
and there there's competition
among the other other books out there to
be the one that people choose to
purchase
after you've been doing it a couple of
years this isn't for the beginner
beekeeper
but something that i do and works really
well
is people pay you to keep bees
it's something that a lot of people
don't realize
is is a way that you can make money as a
beekeeper
but especially if you have the time
one of the hotels here pays us to have
bees on their property
they already had bees on their property
and then the person that did it
left and the hives perished so
we came in brought new bees out there
and we go out there
every other week and take care of their
bees we also harvest the honey
we harvest it into their jars put their
label on it
and they give their jars of honey out to
people that come stay at their place
there are a few companies that are
actually a business that do this
there are restaurants hotels and resorts
schools there are quite a few places
that would
probably botanical gardens retreat
centers
there are places that would want
beehives on their property but they
don't have anyone to take care of them
and it's too much to have somebody on
staff that doesn't know anything to get
into beekeeping
unless it's something that maybe they're
already like thinking about doing on
their own
so what you do is you just contact these
places and
introduce yourself and offer to put bees
on their property
for you know so much money a month and
in exchange
they get the honey they get the bragging
rights they get the bees they get the
free pollination they don't have to do
anything
um i i didn't go looking for this
somebody contacted me about it
but if i especially lived in an urban
area i would this this would be a great
business model
you can put bees on the roofs of
people's houses some people
even just on their personal property
would love to have bees but they don't
have the time for it they don't want to
put the work into it
and so they would be willing to pay you
to care
for the bees if in exchange they're
getting
most of the honey if not all of it some
places
you can do different kinds of exchanges
for the people that don't need bees on
their property
you know you're going to have to give
them a little bit more to sweeten them
up
to make it sound like a good deal but i
found especially for the
resorts and the restaurants the people
that
could really like would love to have
that those bragging rights and to be
able to give out those little jars
they make a really cute little one and a
half ounce hexagon jar
that is a really sweet little
thing that um some resorts will give to
people if they order tea
that little jar of honey or a restaurant
will give to you if you order
a cup of tea and and things like that
they really love so when bringing it up
with some of these places
you know get one of those jars fill it
up with honey
make a fake little label that just has
the hotel's
logo on it and says honey and stick it
on there take a picture
of it and send it to them it's a great
way to
you know get them thinking about doing
something like that
the and and the one hotel i was at when
we were in the ho
the elevator you know they had a poster
up of a beekeeper opening up a hive
and talking about how they have beehives
on their property
so it's a really great bragging right
for some of these places to be able to
tell
the people that stay with them how
they're helping the environment
now of course there's pollination
services here where we are in hawaii
there's a beekeeper like every half of a
mile so
you don't make money offering
pollination services there are queen
breeders everywhere and they're
desperate for places to put bees
so nobody's paying for pollination
but in a lot of the united states
farmers
are pretty desperate to for beekeepers
to bring in their hives for pollination
services and you can get quite a bit of
money for this you can work for an
apiary
i got a job interning
for a farm and then after that i
contacted the farm down the road
i asked to be a beekeeper and they said
they
didn't have any positions open but they
did at their
[Music]
their farm shop which i started working
at and it wasn't very long after i was
taking care of bees and there was
another guy there that was a beekeeper
as well
he got a job working in the warehouse
doing honey packing
and within a year he was also out
working with bees
as well so you might not get a job
immediately as a beekeeper for the
company but as long as they're aware
that you that's where you want to go
then
you probably get a job shortly
thereafter here in kona
queen breeding operations are hiring
beekeepers all the time you don't have
to know
much about bees in order to get a job as
a beekeeper there
but people don't stay for very long it's
very long hours and really hard work and
not great pay
and then finally the last
way that i've seen people make money as
a beekeeper
is through well not the last way but
another way is venom therapy
i don't know much about this except for
once a woman came to the farm and asked
if i would sting her
she had arthritis very badly and so i
did
i didn't charge her for that once a
woman came
by she had lyme disease and
every time they traveled they had to get
like a whole little setup and they would
buy bees
and keep them inside this container and
he would sting her
every day and so i sold them some bees
for 50 bucks
some people do venom therapy you know
they have like the
bee house and everything and that is
beyond my knowledge
but another way to make money and
finally the way that the farm i worked
for made a lot of money
from beekeeping was they just had tours
so this was different than education
and having classes this was it's ten
bucks for an adult
i think like seven or eight for a kid
and under a certain age was free
uh you got a discount if you were a
veteran or
lived in the state and we would it was
an hour long
first we had a video that showed the
beekeeper out with the hives spinning
the honey
and doing things that you can't show
people daily because you don't spend
honey
and bottle honey every single day
but um so they had that little 10-minute
video and they gave people a little
cookie or something made with their
honey and some tea sweetened with their
honey
and then we went out to the corral we
called it and it was 10 bee hives that
were
fenced in just screened though
open on the top and people stand on the
outside
and go on the inside open up a beehive
show people some frames show them the
queen
and bees hatching what brood hunt looks
like and what a
honey looks like and open up some cells
of honey so you can see it dripping down
and then we would go in and do a honey
sampling and then there was a shop for
people to buy a whole bunch of stuff
and we would max it at 15 people
and it was it was they had three tours
a day six days a week and
it was it was almost maxed out and
during the busy season now this is
hawaii
so get lots of tourists
and that's definitely going to affect
how popular your tours are
and they would do free tours for
class trips and
some other associations but those tours
did really well they got a lot of press
through the magazines and local
newspapers
and it was a great source of income
until kovit came along
so if you maybe don't want to do b
education
that is another way to do like very
minimal education
and and reach a wider
range of people just
make sure you have a contract like
something
thrown up by a lawyer that people sign
and the guardian or parent sign on
behalf of kids under the age of 18 that
says that you understand
the risks of being around live bees
if you can get an epipen great but it's
really hard to get an epipen
if you don't have a doctor you know
prescribing it for you
and just understand that there is that
risk that
people i would tell you this people that
are highly allergic to bees will stop by
and um
you it's up to you whether you want to
allow them on the tour or not but
you really just want to make sure that
they understand the risks of being
around those bees
i did those tours for years and there
were only
a few times that someone was stung and
most of the time was actually by a wasp
because the wasps kept on making a nest
in the bamboo that fenced off the corral
it was very rarely by a bee but still
it can't happen and so sometimes people
just don't even know
if they're allergic or they bring their
kids and they don't even their kids in
their room been stung by a beam
so a liability and something to consider
but those are a lot of ways you can make
money as a beekeeper
as a beginner you can buy some honey and
wax and start making products
and use what a little bit you have
yourself to start
once you get going after a few years you
can start teaching
you can start selling bees you can start
selling honey in bulk and
wholesale to stores and
um you know when you become
a famous youtuber or instagram star let
me know
and we can
tell me how you did it if you have other
other ways that have worked for you post
them in the comments i'd love to see
what you guys are up to and what you're
doing
and as for me i stopped beekeeping has
been my sole source of income for the
last couple of years now
i started with the classes classes led
to selling nukes because
most of the time if you want to take a
class and they sell nukes i started out
with the comb honey
and i also get paid to take care of bees
for that resort
um and the combination of those really
great brings in a great variety
of different sources of income getting
paid by somebody to take care of their
bees
is a nice um
base that is a reliable source of income
well wholesale accounts where we sell
our honey
is also great to bring in large chunks
of money because you know you're getting
paid a lot of money for giving them a
whole bunch of cases of honey
and then we have the classes just a few
times a year
now our online classes and
the nukes for sale which is more of a
seasonal thing
and and is just an extra little
way to increase our profits during
certain times of the year when the bees
are busy so if you have any questions
leave them in the comments
i try to answer all of them and
if you want uh you know you're a
beekeeper if t-shirt check them out at
our website
that is behappy hawaii.com link is down
in the show notes we have them in blue
and in gray and we have some kids
t-shirts too that's a beekeeper in
training and some onesies
check them out thanks for watching bye
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
you