Hello
I want to ask you all what do you need to do to go commercial in beekeeping and do you have to go to some kind of school and what all do you need to even maybe to sale bees and nucs and maybe queens if i decide to but mostly to sale honey and pollination of crops local. I do not want to send my hives off because i want to keep check on them and i do not want to get any AHB in my hives. And how many hives will one need to get started and does the government have any kind of funding to help beekeepers out in a finacial problem like some sort of grant All information will be helpful.
Tom
Oh it's been raining here all day long and my dried up pond is filling up and it's a slow rain.
I think that is a great question. I'm also wanting to do this commercially and was wondering about the migration part as well as the other aspects.
So you want to be a commerical beekeeper?
You do realize this is an E ticket ride.
Commerical beekeeping standards vary from state to state. But you can be sure of one thing the department which regulates beeking in your area is going to be on your speed dial.
Commerical beekeepers can also be broken down into different categories.
Pollinators, honey producers, and breeders. Some can be multiple categories. The rules can also be different for the categories.
The number of hives can be a factor in determining if you qualify as a commerical beekeeper. However it is not the only one. You can be a commerical beekeeper with 10 hives if you sell queens across state lines.
Let's start with pollinators. Commerical beekeepers here will have lots of hives to cover a large area. They will be registered and inspected with the appropriate governing agency. The beekeeper charges the farmer a certain amount per hive and delivers the hives to areas on the farmers fields. The beekeeper must keep the hives healthy while the plants are in bloom for pollination. If the plants are also nectar rich , the beekeeper keeps the honey. Keeping healthy hives here is critical as the farmer needs lots of bees to work the fields. The inspection agency will inspect for disease and other concerns. Passing the inspection allows the hives to be used for pollination, failure at a worst case results in the destruction of the hives.
Honey producers are very similar to pollinators with more regulations. Honey producers sell a food product, some as a wholesaler and some as retail, some do both. You are now a regulated in the sameway grocery stores and resturants can be. How you prepare and store your food products are also subject to inspection. You may depending on where you live be required to have you honey lab analyzed before you can sell it.
You now also have sales tax issues to fall under. You may require additional licenses for this.
Breeders are a different breed altogether (drum beat). Those who sell bee and or queens require licenses and health certificates in order to sell their bees and put them in your mailbox which may be a couple of states away.
Careful records for queens can be mandatory to show clean family trees and no inbreeding also a disease free history. Breeders go through tougher inspections because they may have to meet the requirements of different states. Selling packages also requires inspections because no one wants to by contaminated bees and let them affect other hives.
So lets say you are a commerical beekeeper are you going to buy replacement packages each year? In some cases the rules say you must replace your queens every year, are you going to buy them or breed your own?
I do not know of a mandatory education or training requirment but check with the authority having juristiction.
The government is not going to treat you like chrysler and bail you out if you have a problem. There are some states that still do offer beekeepers subsidies but it isn't much and they are few and far between. Don't go into this looking for a rescue, you either swim or drown.
If you are planning on doing honey, do you have storage tanks , and related equipment.
I think being a commerical beekeeper is quite admirable. I also think my friends who are writers are also admirable. I have talked with both commerical beekeepers and writers and while you have the prestige of a jet pilot, you have the salary of a dog catcher. None of the commerical beekeepers I know make big money but they do love what they do.
Sincerely,
Brendhan
To do it right will take years to build up as you learn bees. If you jump right into having hundreds, let along thousands of hives, and you make a mistake on all of them the results can be disastrous.
I learn more every day. I've been keeping them for 32 years.
I myself think that moving into commercial beekeeping (or any agricultural sector) is just too risky. I do, however, want to be a side-linner with maybe 150 hives...someday... :roll:
Commercial beekeeping is not a venture for the faint of heartor the in-experienced, more appropriately a streak of self-sadistic behavior is warranted. To set up for a commerical venture will take thousands of dollars even if you are only going into queen production on a small scale.
This is one idea that should be placed on the back burner until more experience and knowledge is gained making the venture more likely of success.
In the meantime I would suggest you obtain several books, amoung them: The Hive and The Honey Bee,The ABC and XYZ of Bee Culture , and Raising Queens Commercially.
Do your homework and then decide.
Thank you
I was just thinking about what all you would have to do if anyone wanted to go into this kind of business. I know a couple of beekeepers that sale honey to big resturaunts and to local stores to sale and they are doing very well and making a small profit one guy stop working to do this and he is doing good he has several hundred hives and has just pulled 35 supers full of honey of just the bees at his home. But i just wanted to know and i will check with my local bee inspector for more information thank you all for some great advice.
Tom
To be a commercial beekeeper in South Dakota this year you need to win the lottery to keep going because of the drought.3000 hives 0 pounds of honey.
One managing consult started his book that often men ask how to be a good leader. He answers:" It means, tell me how to become rich. If I knew that I would not be here now."
I propose that it would be better to go work in bee farm and learn how they do that job.
Then take one million dollar loan and get real estate, stores, handling machines, trucks. Get good pastures, pick up honey and sell it in good price.
Thanks for the info as well. I have tried to volunteer my time at a couple of the big comercial guy's operation for learning experiance and so far they have'nt taken me up on this. I do have plenty of land,moving equipment and so on, so the rest should'nt be hard to come by. I will however take the advice of going about it slow.
Quote from: Brian D. Bray...In the meantime I would suggest you obtain several books, amoung them: The Hive and The Honey Bee,The ABC and XYZ of Bee Culture , and Raising Queens Commercially.
Do your homework and then decide.
I'm not seeing
Raising Queens Commercially anywhere in LOC or online book sellers -- is that the correct title?
i cant really specifically say much about commercial beekeeping BUT it is agriculture which means you are at the mercy of the weather. if you can afford a bad year or 2 or 3 then go for it.
>>I'm not seeing Raising Queens Commercially
That's the subject matter. Any good book on raising queens will do. I believe my mentor had a book by that title but he died in 1965 and the book was well used by that time so it has probably been out of print for so long it no longer shows up on any lists--if I'm remembering the title correctly.