# average income per hive



## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

those of you who have been following the 2015-2016 thread may have seen where i posted an average income per hive last season of just under $450. there has been one other contributor who shared his numbers which were a little lower than that, and another contributor who stated that my number was revenue poor.

i decided to see if we could get some reponses by starting this poll and look at what might be reasonable or not in terms of return on investment of time and money when it comes to beekeeping. 

for those of you who are hobbyists and don't sell anything or give most of it away please do not respond to the poll. if you are attempting to make a profit from your bees and regardless of whether you are engaged part time with it or full on commercial please respond if you are so inclined.

i've disabled the feature by which other members can see who responded so this will be completely anonymous. many thanks!!


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## JMoore (May 30, 2013)

Looking forward to seeing these results.


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## D Coates (Jan 6, 2006)

I answered assuming gross income divided by number of hives. Net income would be totally different as I burn off the majority of profits by reinvesting in the company via new extraction/bottling related equipment, replacement boxes, and additional hives.


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## ApricotApiaries (Sep 21, 2014)

D Coates said:


> I answered assuming gross income divided by number of hives. Net income would be totally different as I burn off the majority of profits by reinvesting in the company via new extraction/bottling related equipment, replacement boxes, and additional hives.


This was about to be my question. Squarepeg, can you clarify? I am also assuming you mean gross income as opposed to profit or net


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

yes, i should have been more descript, average gross income per hive per year.


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## schmism (Feb 7, 2009)

only income I generate currently comes from honey sales.

If i conservatively estimated 50lbs per hive at $6/lb put me at $300 per hive per year.

As a guy doing this as a hobby for 7 years with 1-3 hives... I'd guess on the whole still haven't profited anything.


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## Brad Bee (Apr 15, 2013)

Wait, there's money to be made at this? 

So far for me, it's all be going out. I did sell a little honey last year but not enough to count.


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## redapples (Aug 1, 2014)

Just a hobby, this is my third year, first year with bees surviving winter. With buying bees for 2 more hives this year I will start with 4 hives this year, maybe a shorter season in Wisconsin. Our lawns just turned green this week. With expenses hoping for a good season to maybe break even. I sold about 100# of last seasons honey.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

many thanks to all who have responded.


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## kaizen (Mar 20, 2015)

squarepeg said:


> many thanks to all who have responded.


interested to see the results...


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## Rader Sidetrack (Nov 30, 2011)

>> interested to see the results...


That one is easy  .... just click the button at the bottom of the poll choices - the button that says ... "_View Poll Results_"


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## kaizen (Mar 20, 2015)

Rader Sidetrack said:


> >> interested to see the results...
> 
> 
> That one is easy  .... just click the button at the bottom of the poll choices - the button that says ... "_View Poll Results_"


Oops sorry I thought he disabled it. I miss read.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

the results can be seen at anytime by scrolling to the top of the thread. the responses are anonymous. thanks again for participating in the poll.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

i understand how discussing numbers is a personal and private topic and not everyone wants to share even anonymously. i really appreciate how many of you were willing to participate in the poll.

as stated, the main reason i put my numbers out there is because from time to time comments are made to the effect that keeping bees off treatments cannot be profitable. i'm planning to share my 2016 numbers at the end of the season mostly for comparison to the 2015 numbers, but i'll likely not report in that much detail for future seasons.

so what we have here is certainly not scientific or verifiable but based on the responses we have what looks to be a fairly normal distribution with $500 being about in the middle. i am going to assume that the respondents are a representative cross section with most using conventional methods. this is pretty consistent with what most of the club members around here are doing, and shows me that what i am doing is more or less on par with what would be considered 'typical'.

to those of you in the $750+ category, my hat is off to you for being able to get that much income from a hive of bees. i can only see that happening with expert management, good bees, and good locations.


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## Hiwire (Oct 19, 2014)

I don't think getting that much income is as unusual as the results indicate. Think about it...2 splits per hive...Around here they sell for $150 so that's $300. a conservative 80 lbs of honey per hive...Between small bottles and larger volumes, I figure I average somewhere around $9 per lb. 80 lbs is $720. Adding the $300 from nucs makes over $1000. Granted, that involves retail selling as well as selling nucs, but its not unusual. To me it sounds more like average around here.
Ray


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

squarepeg said:


> to those of you in the $750+ category, my hat is off to you for being able to get that much income from a hive of bees. i can only see that happening with expert management, good bees, and good locations.


I don't know where you are going with this whole 'income per hive' effort but the revenue stream comes from the market in general and
the customer base in particular. In general a small market for your product, saturated market, no demand for specialty products, either by choice or out of necessity, in the area severely limits revenue.
The business end of running bees for profit has to consider these issues and a host of others before the hive count gets above 10.

Any above average honey crop on a consistent basis requires competent management, good bees and decent locations.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

understood ray. down here our spring flow is over by about mid june and the fall flow doesn't kick in until mid to late august, so we have a couple of months or so of a summer dearth during which the bees may actually go through some of their stores especially if the weather is dry.

from what i can gather the flow up north is almost continuous from spring until fall without much of a dearth. i believe there potential for a bigger crop up there although the flip side is the bees require more honey for overwintering. would you concur and has that been your experience?

i think another possible difference between down here and up there (and related to the extended dearth) is that swarming season may be more stretched out over the season up there vs. concentrated into a few week span like we see down here.

taking 2 splits and still getting 80 lbs. harvest wouldn't happen in most years here, unless the splits were made after the spring flow, and by that late in the season not too many folks would want to buy them.


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## AdamBeal (Aug 28, 2013)

I guess I shouldn't comment since this is my 3rd year and I have yet to make 1 penny in 3 years, but I should finally have enough honey to sell some from my 6 hives this year. If I were to make $300 per hive it will be the hardest most labor intensive $1,800 I have made since I worked in tobacco as a teenager a few times. I haven't even factored in time trying to market and sell this honey. If you take all the time I have put into it in the last 3 years at the hives and subract my startup expenses it will come out to about $1 per hour in wages. Geesh on paper this all sounds so much better just setup a hive, throw in some bees, then perpetually collect your $300 every year HA. keeping my hives from swarming this season has been very labor intensive much more than I imagined. Now I am not discouraged going to stay with it but this is something I didn't really see early on that I can see much more clearly now. You will work very hard for that $300 and it will take many many many hours. I haven't been able to scale it up too much and make it easier yet as I have added hives but maybe that comes with several more years of experience I imagine .


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## Joe Hillmann (Apr 27, 2015)

What is everyone considering a hive? If you split a nuc off and sell it does it count towards it's parent hive or is it now it's own hive? 

Are people counting the average of all their hive? Including ones that died or just the average of their hives that produced an income?

Depending on what is and isn't being counted can changes the numbers a lot.

It would also be nice if the $250-$500 range was broken up in smaller groups. Squarepeg said it looks like the average is in the $500 range but because of the way the groups are broke up the average could be closer to the $250-$300 range.


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## noljohn (Jan 9, 2013)

Hiwire $9 per pd? That's pretty good. How much do your bottles/jars cost and labeling? How much do you sell your honey for?


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## John Davis (Apr 29, 2014)

Joe
To answer your question I take the total number of hives and nucs that I take into winter as the number of hives. Divide that into total gross income the next year from honey, nuc sales, polination etc. That accounts for resources lost during the winter as well as any increase (bee resources) made the following (income) year. Gives a pretty clear picture unless you consciously are decreasing hive numbers which would inflate sales. Does not count expenses, that was not asked in the poll.


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## Joe Hillmann (Apr 27, 2015)

John Davis said:


> Joe
> To answer your question I take the total number of hives and nucs that I take into winter as the number of hives. Divide that into total gross income the next year from honey, nuc sales, polination etc. That accounts for resources lost during the winter as well as any increase (bee resources) made the following (income) year. Gives a pretty clear picture unless you consciously are decreasing hive numbers which would inflate sales. Does not count expenses, that was not asked in the poll.


Up here if someone wants to sell nucs in the early spring they need to over winter them. If they used your method of accounting then each nuc would count as a hive and only count as $120-$180 per hive. Vs. counting nucs that are made with the intention of selling as income towards the parent hive even if they are kept through the winter. Using your method for a breeder of overwintered nucs would severely reduce you income/hive ratio.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

This thread is interesting but the results will be skewed heavily in favor of someone running a very small number of hives who is retailing everything at high prices. In my world I'm not concerned so much with average income per hive as I am in income per man hour of labor invested or more directly annual income.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

good point jim. i've considered logging my hours spent through the year on bee work, but then i thought better of it. 

after being told my hives were 'revenue poor', and being that i am not practicing conventional methods, i was mostly interested to see how i was doing compared to others. 

to be honest i'm mostly happy with the return on investment so far. the cost of living is pretty reasonable down here and with a just another yard or two i could supplement retirement nicely while doing something i enjoy.

thanks for weighing in.


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## clyderoad (Jun 10, 2012)

squarepeg>>
To clarify, this is the full text regarding your revenue per hive:


clyderoad said:


> a quick recap of 2015:
> 
> 1. went into last winter with 18 colonies.
> 2. lost 3 over the winter leaving 15 (16.7% loss)
> ...


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

This thread does a good job of pointing out what is possible in the realm of hobbyist up to sideliner sized operations. That's a good thing. Didn't mean to disrupt just to point out that most commercial guys have a little different perspective, income per colony is relevant for sure but line 37 (AGI) on your 1040 is what really tells you how you're doing.


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## David LaFerney (Jan 14, 2009)

Good thread Squarepeg - it should be encouraging to people who would like to earn some sideline income off their hobby to see that it is indeed feasible to do so. And thanks for everyone's participation and insight.

I will say this - I'm not very optimistic about this season because I've has so many swarm issues. Then again I wasn't optimistic at the end of April last year either and it turned out all right. Fingers crossed every year I guess.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

many thanks david, and i'm hoping the best for you and all beesource members for the 2016 season!

i'm starting to think that our main flow may end a little earlier than normal and that we may have a longer and deeper summer dearth this year.

some of the blooms and new wax making came earlier than they have been the past couple of years, and we have fallen a little behind normal on rainfall.

fingers crossed down here as well.


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## squarepeg (Jul 9, 2010)

Joe Hillmann said:


> It would also be nice if the $250-$500 range was broken up in smaller groups. Squarepeg said it looks like the average is in the $500 range but because of the way the groups are broke up the average could be closer to the $250-$300 range.


now that more members have responded it does look like the results are trending that way joe.


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