# How big is your honey house?



## xroads (Apr 9, 2013)

For future planning,

Will 2000 sq ft do it?

Thanks


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

How much honey do you anticipate harvesting? Are you counting a hot room in that? Storage for supers? That's a LOT of room. It's the size of an average house in the US. It's 67 feet by 30 feet or 45 feet by 45 feet or some other factor of 2000. If you anticipate a lot of honey and you need somewhere to store the full supers (probably a hot room) and the empty supers that would still be a lot of room. If you just need enough to bring the supers in a few stacks at a time and then haul them back out, a sink and a 20 frame or so extractor, you could get by with about 150 to 200 square feet. I just built a HUGE barn and it's 34' x 75' which is 2,448 sq ft...

If I were doing a LOT of honey and I wanted a hot room and somewhere to put all the empty supers, I'd figure what you think that will be (in stacks of supers that will fit on a dolly, like six mediums or so tall) and add it to that 150 to 200 square feet for the extracting area


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## xroads (Apr 9, 2013)

Hopefully enough to support 500 hives is our goal. Right now our business is in this 6500 sq ft building, but we are only using the front 4000 sq ft right now.


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## Michael Bush (Aug 2, 2002)

2,000 should be enough to do anything you want.


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## jmgi (Jan 15, 2009)

No need to go any bigger than necessary unless you have unlimited money to spend. With a 500 hive operation you can fit all the extracting equipment you need in an area of around 600 sq. ft. in my opinion. A total size of about 1200-1400 sq. ft will give you room for a large storage tank, hot room, and room for storing extracted supers. If you want office space, and a bottling room, kick in another 300 sq. ft. for a grand total of around 1500-1700 sq. ft. So as MB said, 2000 sq. ft. should be enough to do anything you want.


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

No matter how big one's honey house is, it isn't big enough. That's a rule of life.


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## jean-marc (Jan 13, 2005)

Should be large enough if you actually stick to 500 hives. That can change. I know this from personal experience. also agree with Mark B. , never big enough.

I would plan with 16 foot ceilings if possible that way pallets of supers can be stacked. Also plan the building in such a way that if you decide to expand to 2000 or more hives you can add to it without to much grief.

Jean-Marc


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## Makin' Honey (Sep 13, 2010)

xroads, I grew up in Nebraska in a 5000 hive operation. The extracting room was 30 x 30 = 900 sq ft. In it was two extractors, one automatic uncapper, spin float wax spinner and infloor honey sump and pump. There was plenty of room for several thousand boxes of honey. The 25 drum honey tank was not in the extracting room. You can see it thru the door. The photo was taken in the early 1980's and shows the extracting plant in one corner of the room. This room was heated with water pipes in the floor, an excellent way to heat honey before extrating. Sorry for the pool quality of the photo. Victor H


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

That's a nice looking operation there Makin' Honey. Do you have any more photos?


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## My-smokepole (Apr 14, 2008)

I know Householers just build a new one that is part of his warehouse and he wishes that the warehouse side was bigger. I am guessing but the extracting room is 16 bye 36' with honey storage out side of it.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

jean-marc said:


> Should be large enough if you actually stick to 500 hives. That can change. I know this from personal experience. also agree with Mark B. , never big enough.
> 
> I would plan with 16 foot ceilings if possible that way pallets of supers can be stacked. Also plan the building in such a way that if you decide to expand to 2000 or more hives you can add to it without to much grief.
> 
> Jean-Marc


Good point. Vertical gives better bang for the buck as concrete is expensive. A good used warehouse forklift can be purchased for $5,000. We just added a 4800 sq. ft. addition and went with 14' sidewalls. Now kind of wishing I had gone up to 16'.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

I went with a 12 ceiling in my extraction room, and hot room. It works fine and I would think 14' in the extraction room would be an overkill, but 14' would be nice in the hotroom/wintershed other than being more area to heat. I would think 14-16' for a warehouse would be adequate.


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## Ian (Jan 16, 2003)

xroads, plan an office area in that design, washroom with laundry. It is the most important area of my operation.


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## jim lyon (Feb 19, 2006)

Ian said:


> I went with a 12 ceiling in my extraction room, and hot room. It works fine and I would think 14' in the extraction room would be an overkill, but 14' would be nice in the hotroom/wintershed other than being more area to heat. I would think 14-16' for a warehouse would be adequate.


Yes, I agree. I have a 12' ceiling in the extracting room and it works perfectly for our purposes. Stacking honey drums 3 high works nicely with a 12' ceiling as well. Warehouse storage of supers is another matter though. We like to stack mediums 8 high on a 40"x48" pallet. It requires 16' to go 3 pallets high. Our 14' ceiling allows us to only go 8,8 and 6. It wast really a screw up as I had done the math but I felt that stacking boxes 16' high would be a bit dicey and often we don't always necessarily want to stack 8 high on our trucks. Turns out the smoother concrete compared to our old building made higher stacking pretty easy.


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## Nick Noyes (Apr 28, 2005)

Our Idaho extracting room is 25'x50' with a 25'x25' heat room and another 25'x25' break, tool, storage room. This works for extracting but we don't store any supers in the heat room (unless full waiting to extract) or extracting room. There is another 50'x100' area for storing empty supers, barrels and such. Our ceilings are 18' which allows for a seconds story over break room for storage and allows us to stack honey three pallets high in heat room. The tall ceilings also allow the heat to escape up. Our ND plant has 16' ceilings and it seems short to me.
I would highly recommend setting up your warehouse's to be forklift friendly. If you are going to move much honey you will be glad you did. 
I also agree you can't build it to big.


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## odfrank (May 13, 2002)

My extracting room was built in 1979 and measures about 12 X 28. This is adequate for the three plus tons we run through it annually. It is a partitioned section of a three door garage. We are using 40 - 60+ year old equipment, parallel to our ages. We have a Diamond Line capping spinner, Woodman and Kelly pumps and sumps, Cowan uncapper, Kelly 1970's 100g. and 25g. storage tanks. No heat is used on the honey other than uncapping. We final filter using a system inspired by porno movies. I am lucky that my room is filled with equipment of which I almost own none of. Some was abandoned by the former associate who inspired the room's construction, or owned by the other associate I permit to use the room. I have recently added stainless steel tables for cut comb processing. Yes, it could use re-painting after 35 years, and yes, I pump through galvanized pipe. I store my honey supers in it during the winter.


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## The Honey Householder (Nov 14, 2008)

4 years ago I set up a 50x100 and the honey room is 22x50 which give enough room to pull 500+ supers(climate control room). 9x12 wax room, 12x16 tank/ bottling room, 8x12 break room. The warehouse is 50x60 and we don't store supers in there and still isn't big enough. 90% of our honey is sold in season(so we don't warehouse much honey), but we do buy tons of beeswax and we buy our glass by the skids. Pallet racking has help a lot. 

Jim, I know what you mean. I only wish I had went taller on my walls too. We did 16'. I added an apartment and office up stairs and it make things harder to get things built right. 

Jim your right about smooth floors too. We use the pallet jack a lot most since we built new and the floor was all poured at one time. If I can just keep the fork lift from dragging in stones. My Dad tells me I need some concrete out side too($$$$$).

4500+ supers extracted in 6 weeks from my operation and 870 supers extracted for others. 

Just leave room to grow.


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## Makin' Honey (Sep 13, 2010)

sqkcrk said:


> That's a nice looking operation there Makin' Honey. Do you have any more photos?


sqkcrk, Unfortunately I don't have any other photos. I worked in that extracting room for years and extracted 1000's of drums of honey and that is the only photo and lots of memories. Victor H


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## Keith Jarrett (Dec 10, 2006)

Not to hi jack this thread, but, what eve height for the basic shop (storage, wood, equipment)?


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## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Makin' Honey said:


> sqkcrk, Unfortunately I don't have any other photos. I worked in that extracting room for years and extracted 1000's of drums of honey and that is the only photo and lots of memories. Victor H


Another Thread maybe you could share some of those memories.


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## zhiv9 (Aug 3, 2012)

sqkcrk said:


> No matter how big one's honey house is, it isn't big enough. That's a rule of life.


I always feel the same way about my truck.


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## angel (Jul 23, 2013)

Great thread. Writing down ideas from this since I plan on building.


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