Beekeeping can be a hobby for some and a full time profession for others. Regardless of the size or intent of one’s operation, owning and managing honey bee colonies always costs money. 

Ed.Note: All prices and weights in this article have been adapted to current Australian prices.

Given that, it is necessary for sideline and commercial beekeepers to generate an income with their colonies, otherwise they will not be beekeepers for very long. Furthermore, even hobbyists want a hobby that pays for itself. Thus, it seems prudent that all beekeepers, regardless of the number of colonies they manage, seek to find ways to generate income from their beekeeping enterprises. 

The good news is that there are as many ways to make money with bees as there are ways to lose it. Some of the obvious ways of making money include keeping bees for the purpose of producing honey or other hive products. However, bees can be a useful source of income in other ways as well. In this article, I outline the main revenue streams associated with beekeeping. Where possible, I note what a colony contribute to income (i.e., what they can contribute to the revenue stream), but only in the income sense. I make no effort to outline the costs associated with generating income a specific way, information that would be necessary to highlight profit. 

Let us consider the production of liquid honey as an example. I will share with you the national average (in kilograms) of honey produced by managed bee colonies. From there, you can look at the value of honey by the kilogram and figure out what a typical colony is capable of producing in gross value per year. I do not, however, share the management costs associated with producing that honey. This is, of course, because management strategies and associated input costs vary widely.

I hope that this article will give you an idea concerning the revenue possibilities associated with keeping bees. At the very least, I hope it broadens financial options for you and helps you find a way to get the bees to pay for themselves. Where possible, I provide you a range of product or value produced per unit (which is usually per colony). This range illustrates what gross income is possible if marketing the product appropriately and if the market supports the value.

1) Liquid honey - Arguably, most people outside of beekeeping think of liquid honey (Fig. 1) as the principal source of revenue for beekeepers. Of course, beekeepers know that this is not the case. However, liquid honey is the most identifiable product of bees as far as the general public is concerned. Liquid honey, as the name implies, is honey extracted from the combs, then filtered and bottled in jars in its liquid form. Beekeepers can get more money for their efforts by bottling and marketing their own honey, rather than selling it wholesale. Thus, a savvy businessman or businesswoman can turn a pound of honey into quite a lot of money.

2) Comb or section comb honey - The term ‘comb honey’ often is used to describe any type of honey product that is, or has, a piece of wax comb associated with it. However, it is most appropriately used to describe a honey-filled piece of comb that bees built into small wooden or plastic sections, which is why it is usually called ‘section’ honey. Essentially, these sections are self-contained combs of honey. Bees build the comb right into the future package. Sections range in price from $6-$12/section, and there is usually just over a kg honey/section when using ‘Ross Rounds’ sections as an example. Colonies usually can only produce 40-80 of these sections, making the value between $240-$960/colony. Before you get excited, comb or section honey can be difficult to produce and usually requires a good command of bee behaviour, resource availability, and bee husbandry. Regardless, the production of comb honey can be a profitable endeavour.

3) Cut-comb honey - Cut-comb honey refers to pieces of honey-filled, capped combs that have been cut from a single, large comb (Fig. 2). The edges of the comb are drained and the comb is wrapped or packaged individually for market. In this case, the beekeeper is in control of the size of the comb cut and packaged so prices can vary significantly. Cut-comb ranges in value between about $6-20/kg. It is not reasonable to expect to get as much weight from cut-comb from a colony, as you would from liquid honey. In fact, my guess is that a typical colony would produce only about a medium super of good quality cut-comb, or about 18kg (after subtracting out the weight of the frames and boxes), though skilled beekeepers with good bees and a good nectar flow can produce two or more medium supers per colony (80+ lbs or 36.3+ kg). This can translate into $480-$1,600 in revenue. 

4) Creamed honey — Creamed honey is honey that has undergone controlled crystallisation (Fig. 3). Honey is a supersaturated sugar solution. Consequently, the sugars can come out of the solution, which causes the honey to granulate, or to turn into a sugar-based solid. Honey that granulates naturally usually contains large, course sugar crystals, whereas creamed honey, on the other hand, has much smaller crystals, making the final product spreadable, like butter, at room temperature (when everything goes right). A  kg of creamed honey goes for $5-$8. So, a colony producing the national average of 80kg can produce $400-$640 worth of creamed honey.

5) Chunk honey — Chunk honey is a piece of cut-comb honey placed into a container and flooded with liquid honey (Fig. 4). To me, this is the most beautiful way to process and display honey. It is also my favourite jar of honey to purchase. Chunk honey commands a price that is higher than that for a liquid jar of honey, mainly because it includes the chunk of comb. The price range of chunk honey is similar to that of cut-comb. Though this is a very nice way to prepare and sell honey, it takes more effort to produce. The piece of comb is prepared the same way cut-comb honey is prepared. Thus, you get less of it per colony than you would if you were producing simply liquid honey.

6) Honey bottler/packer - This is an individual who purchases honey wholesale from other beekeepers, bottles it (some call this ‘repackaging’), labels it, and sells it at market prices direct to the customer or to a vendor. If honey sells, for example, for $5/kg wholesale and you can get $12/kg when you bottle it and sell it direct to customers, it does not take long before you can turn a significant profit. Of course, you must have a large customer base or provide honey to a number of vendors in order for this to be profitable. However, I have known many beekeepers who tried to produce honey for sale and realised that it costs less money in many circumstances to purchase other people’s honey and sell it than it does to produce one’s own honey and sell it. If you keep only a few colonies and the demand for your honey is greater than the supply, you should think about being a honey packer.

7) Mead - This is an alcoholic drink (Fig. 5) produced from the fermentation of honey. Historians tell us that honey is the first ever fermented product. People apparently had been fermenting honey long before they began fermenting anything else. Perhaps the best example of this is in the classic literature piece Beowulf. Beowulf and his friends fellowshipped in ‘mead halls’, or places where a lot of mead was drunk. Just like wine, mead has nearly limitless quality and flavour possibilities. Every honey produced yields its own color and unique flavour to mead. There are dry meads, sweet meads, flavoured meads, etc. Making mead is an art form, and becomes a hobby for some, and an important business for others. If you browse the course offerings at beekeeping educational events, you will notice that there are usually lectures and/or workshops on mead making. My guess is that the demand for mead will only grow in the future. Thus, there are emerging markets everywhere for this hive product derivative. 

8) Pollen - This is collected from bees (Fig. 6a) entering colonies and passing through the small holes of a pollen trap (Fig. 6b). The holes are just large enough to accommodate the bees trying to get back into their colony, but too small to allow the pollen pellets through with the bees. As a result, the pollen pellets are knocked off the legs of the bees and collected in a tray, usually located at the bottom or front of the pollen trap. The beekeeper can then collect the pollen. Pollen pellets usually have to be dried after collection. Freezing the pellets is recommended as well, as this kills anything living that accompanies the pollen (such as small hive beetles, wax moths, etc.). Pollen pellets or the powder made from them is purchased by people and usually used for its protein or presumed medicinal properties. The amount of pollen that a colony can collect for human use varies based on pollen resource availability in the area. Obviously, you cannot keep pollen traps on colonies perpetually as colonies need pollen to grow. So, there is a balance between collecting pollen and allowing the bees to keep some for themselves.

9) Propolis - Honey bees collect resins, saps, and other sticky substances for use in their colonies. Beekeepers call this collection of materials ‘propolis’. Bees use propolis for weather-proofing their colonies and, likely because propolis has antimicrobial activity, it plays an important part in colony level immunity. In fact, this may be their main use for propolis. As with pollen, people use propolis mainly for a series of presumed health benefits that originate from propolis. Propolis is harvested from colonies using a device called a propolis trap, which look a lot like plastic queen excluders. They are placed on top of the uppermost super, just above the frames. The lid of the hive is replaced, but propped open so that light and air can enter the nest through the propolis trap. This causes the bees to propolise the trap to stop the light and airflow. The traps can be taken from the colonies, frozen, and the propolis popped off the trap for harvest. Propolis usually does not have to be processed in any way, although in New Zealand, where propolis is readily produced, it is often cleaned. Different stocks of bees use more propolis than do other stocks. Thus, the amount of propolis one can make per colony varies by the stock of bee used and the location of the bees as some plants produce more resins than do others. 

10) Royal jelly - This is a liquid food produced by adult worker bees and fed to immature queen larvae. The collection and human use of royal jelly is practised mainly in eastern countries. One does not see much collection and use of royal jelly in western countries, though that has been changing in recent years and I suspect that the demand for royal jelly will increase. This is especially true given that many regulators are requiring certain tests be performed to determine the impacts of pesticides on immature bees; tests that require bees to be reared in the laboratory using royal jelly as a component of the bees’ diet. I think this will lead to a spike in the demand for royal jelly in the future. It is not so easy to produce but there are strategies for doing it. Essentially, you have to get colonies to produce queens and harvest the royal jelly from the queen cells, hence the reason it is so expensive since there is so little royal jelly in a single cell.

 Other hive products

11) Brood - It is not popular in western countries, but the collection and consumption of bee brood is common in some eastern countries. I include it in this list just to make you aware that this is, yet again, another way to make money using your bee colonies. I have eaten a quiche in which bee brood was the main source of protein - it was good, though the larvae did not taste like chicken! I keep hearing that humans, over time, will warm to the idea of eating insects, to which I suggest that they are already warm to the idea, just not in some countries. To be honest, I doubt that there is a huge demand for bee brood in the US, but the best businessmen and women have a product and will find ways to create the demand. Good luck.

12) Venom - Bee venom can be harvested using a special apparatus that causes the bees to sting the device and with which the venom is collected. As with other minor hive products (pollen, propolis, and royal jelly), the harvest and use of venom is not common in Australia. In fact, I have never seen one of the devices that is used to collect venom, nor do I know of anyone who collects bee venom for sale. Regardless, venom is harvested mainly for use by allergists who can use it to desensitise people who are allergic to bee venom. Others use it for presumed medicinal treatments or as an ingredient in cosmetics or creams. My guess is that the market for bee venom is small and most beekeepers will not consider collecting it for market purposes as a practical option. Though the harvest of bee venom may not be popular in western countries, bee venom therapy seems to be. The idea behind bee venom therapy is that bee stings lessen or eliminate certain ailments such as arthritis. I know beekeepers who provide sting services (i.e., they let their bees sting people) for customers who are trying to reap the presumed medical benefits of bee stings. I do not know what the market value of this service is, but it seems to be gaining in popularity.

13) Block beeswax - Worker honey bees secrete wax from special glands located underneath their abdomens onto a section of the abdomen called the ‘wax plate’. The wax flakes off the plates in scales that the bees collect with their mandibles and shape it into the wax cells and cappings of those cells. For the beekeeper, marketable wax is generated, usually, from dead-out colonies, cappings from cells containing honey (Fig. 7a), and from burr comb that the bees sometimes build in gaps in the nest. The wax is washed, melted, filtered and moulded for use. One of the most popular uses of beeswax for beekeepers is the block of beeswax (Fig. 7b), where a kilogram of beeswax can sell for $16-17 wholesale. In most cases, wax is an ‘extra’ for beekeepers, meaning that most beekeepers do not manage colonies to produce wax, rather they just harvest it because it is either a byproduct of harvesting honey, of a lost colony, or of old/damaged combs. Thus, the production of block wax usually is not a way for beekeepers to generate a reliable income, though it can be a great income supplement. 

14) Ornamental beeswax - How can block wax (#13 above) be used? It can be used to make various ornamental wax products, such as candles and ornaments (Fig. 8). Before this is done, the wax usually has to be filtered with a small particle filter, sometimes bleached, and then poured into a mould or milled to produce the final product. Ornamental wax products can be of somewhat low individual value, to quite high individual value when used in art. Thus, the value of ornamental products can be quite valuable to beekeepers who are willing to put in the work to make the products desirable. It can be of such value that some beekeepers actually purchase block wax to use to render into the ornamental products. I have never seen a formal price range assigned to ornamental wax products, but I suspect that the value of the average kilogram of wax used for ornamental purposes is 2-3 times that of wax sold wholesale in blocks. 

15) Specialty products such as creams, lip balms and lotions from hive products - some of the hive products such as wax, pollen, royal jelly, honey and propolis, can be used as constituents in other products, for example, in creams, lotions, lip balms, etc. There can be a great demand for products such as these. Generally speaking, further refining the hive products into, or including them in specialty products usually increases the value of the hive products over that of just selling them individually.

16) Colony removal - A number of beekeepers make money from their beekeeping skills in ways that do not involve the management of their own hives. One of those ways is removing feral colonies from places that they are not wanted (Fig. 9). Individuals providing bee colony removal services need special training and equipment in order to provide this service for others. In many states, removing bee colonies from a structure is considered pest control, in which case those engaging in this service would need a pest control license. In other states, it is not considered pest control, so the bee removal specialist can remove the colony from the structure as long as he/she is not killing the bees (at which point it would become pest control). Because of this, it is important that those engaging in this activity check with local and state laws to determine how it is legislated in a given area. Removing colonies can be quite a lucrative business if there is a high density of feral colonies in an area. This can be the case in parts of the US, especially where African honey bees are present. In my experience, the average colony removal can cost the customer from $300-$1,500 or more. Individuals performing this service should carry adequate liability insurance. It certainly pays to be protected.

17) Equipment manufacturer or distributer - One of the noticeable trends in beekeeping in the last decade is that everyone seems to want to become a beekeeper. This has created a high demand for bees and, consequently, a high demand for beekeeping equipment. Some have seized on this opportunity by becoming equipment manufacturers and/or distributers (the latter being individuals who purchase equipment wholesale from manufacturers and then sell it directly to the consumer). This can be a profitable endeavour as long as the demand for bees and equipment remains high.

18) Managing other people’s hives - A really clever profession has been born out of the growing interest in beekeeping. A lot of people do not want to keep bees themselves, but still would like bees kept on their property. As a result of this, some entrepreneurial beekeepers have started businesses centered around placing colonies on others’ properties and charging those individuals for managing the bees on their behalf (Fig. 10). They usually require their customers to purchase the colony and then pay them a monthly management fee. This is a clever way to make money with bees. There seems to be growing interest in this enterprise

19) Pollination - The principal way that many commercial beekeepers make money is by renting their colonies to growers to provide pollination services for the growers’ crops (Fig. 11). The fees collected for providing those colonies ranges from $30-$120+/colony, though the upper price range usually only is paid for those colonies used to pollinate almonds. Providing colonies for pollination purposes can even be done on a small scale. When I first started keeping bees, I rented two of my 16 colonies to someone who grew blueberries in their backyard. I made $40/colony. The average commercial beekeeper who uses his/her colonies for pollination purposes, uses each colony to pollinate four to five different crops. The main catch with pollination is that most crops that colonies are used to pollinate are of poor resource quality (little or no nectar and poor quality pollen). Thus, the colonies have to be managed heavily to ensure adequate health and nutrition. Furthermore, colonies used to pollinate crops tend to be exposed to greater amounts of pesticides, given that these products are necessary for the control of crop pests. With a few colonies and a trailer, you can help growers meet their pollination needs and make a little income at the same time.

20) Selling colonies - The growing interest in beekeeping and high colony loss rates have created a huge demand for colonies. This has led a lot of people into the business of creating and selling full size colonies (Fig. 12). This is a risk/reward type business. The risk is that your colonies have to be in great health to be able to be split, then grown, and finally sold to other beekeepers. You do not want any uncontrolled diseases/ pests, and your equipment has to be in good shape, all among other things. The reward is that the average full size colony (a double, FD Langstroth brood box) sells for $300+. However, one’s beekeeping skills have to be good to create high quality colonies with some consistency. Otherwise, your customer base will let you know.

21) Selling nucs - Beekeepers can also get into the business of creating and selling nucleus colonies, or nucs (Fig. 13). Nucs are simply smaller versions of full size colonies. The main difference between a nuc and a full size colony is that nucs are not quite as wide as their full size cousins, meaning that they can accommodate fewer frames. A typical 5-frame nuc costs between $130-$175. At the moment, the demand for nuc colonies seems to be at an all-time high, meaning that you would be able to sell almost everything you produce. On the other hand, producing high quality nucs comes with all of the same risks associated with selling full size colonies. Thus, you should have some experience under your belt before undertaking this endeavour.

22) Selling package bees - I am going to stick with the theme of selling bees and note that selling packages of bees (Fig. 14) is a long tradition that still produces a product that is in high demand. The advantage of selling package bees, rather than nucs or dill size colonies, is that the beekeeper is only investing in the production of bees and queens rather than having to produce and sell the beekeeping equipment (i.e., the hives) with the bees. The average package of bees with a queen costs $75-$120. A good, strong colony can be used to generate three to four packages of bees per year.

23) Selling queens - Every colony, nuc, and package of bees that is sold must include a queen (Fig. 15). As you might imagine, then, the production of quality queens is very important. If someone has to produce all of those queens, it might as well be you. That said, producing queens is not for everyone. It requires a good knowledge of bee breeding and selection, specialised equipment, and the appropriate training and skill. Even so, the high price of production queens ($20-$50/queen) and breeder queens ($250-$1,500/queen) lures a lot of new beekeepers into queen rearing seminars around the country. I feel the market is ripe not just for queen breeders who can produce lots of queens, but also queen breeders who can produce a high quality product.

 Education and art

24) Author (bee periodicals, bee books, etc.) - You can make money with bee knowledge in non-management related ways. For example, you could be an author who writes about bees - there are many forms of literature for which this can be accomplished: documentary-style writing, fiction, periodicals (like what I am doing here ©), etc. I once was told that bees are the second most written about thing in history, behind religion. I do not believe this to be true, but it does illustrate the point that there is a great demand and a great readership for all things bees. So, dust off your keyboard and start introducing the world to honey bees. You will become a better beekeeper for it and hopefully someone will benefit from your prose.

25) Bee-related art - Honey bees feature prominently in art. I have travelled all around the world, visiting museums of all types and it never ceases to amaze me how common it is to see honey bees or beekeeping portrayed in stained glass windows of major cathedrals, in paintings by notable artists and in sculptures from antiquity. Even today, many hobby beekeepers are artists in their professional lives, and this gives them the opportunity to combine two of their most cherished loves. The world is hungry for honey bees, and one of the ways to satiate this hunger is to provide the satisfaction of seeing bees and beekeeping portrayed in art. Some of you reading this article have this skill set and have discovered that producing and selling bee-related art can be a method of increasing the income derived from beekeeping.

26) Bee-related homegoods and miscellaneous items (clothes, trinkets, etc.) - Similar to #25 bee-related art, you can make money portraying bees in everyday items. Since becoming a beekeeper, I have noticed bees displayed in all types of homegoods from clothes to kitchen decor, from trinkets to treasures. Go to any bee meeting and someone there will be wearing socks with bees on them, serving the snack on plates designed as hives, etc. All of this has to come from somewhere. Many beekeeping events include vendors who specialise in the production and/or distribution of this bee, for lack of a better term, “stuff”. People buy it, so someone has to make it. It is a good way to supplement your beekeeping efforts, especially if you have this skill set and a creative eye.

27) Beekeeping educator - The final way that I regard you can make money related to your beekeeping knowledge is by being a bee educator. A lot of beekeepers make money by travelling to local or state beekeeping clubs to provide lectures and/or workshops. I do not know anyone who does this for a living (meaning that they generate all of their income this way), but I do know a lot of individuals who supplement their income travelling and training others on the fine craft of beekeeping. It is increasingly common to be paid an honorarium when lecturing about bees and this can range from $50 per appearance to $1,000+ per day of the event. Granted, the latter payout is rare, but welcomed by those individuals who spend nights and weekends on the road sharing the elegant world of honey bees and beekeeping with their membership. 

 Conclusion

I hope that something I have shared in this article gives you some ideas on how to generate a little pocket money with your bees and bee knowledge. Many of us would keep bees just for the satisfaction we get out of being associated with the bees and their hives. However, it certainly helps when the bees are able to pay for themselves. I hope I have given you some new financial goals. Happy beekeeping.