> Periodically economists try to explore beekeeping....
With the same effort and capital with which one can make one dollar in beekeeping, one could easily make several dollars in nearly ANY other pursuit.
That said, one does not need an MBA with a spreadsheet to see that a combination of vertical integration, product differentiation, and boutique service offerings could (in the 1990s, at least) make even a small operation highly profitable. I may have had one of the more profitable under 1000-colony operations, as I invested only a fraction of what most other operations my size did, and never sold anything wholesale.
Some key decisions that can be adopted by any smaller operation to be more profitable are below:
1) Obtaining Demeter Certification. (Biodynamics, per Rudolf Steiner's mysticism, administered similar to the USDA Organic program) which allowed me to sell the hone and pollen crops of my non-pollinating colonies for several times the usual prices to health-food stores. Back then, biodynamics was a niche, but health-food stores clamored for such products. A key factor was private or customized labeling for each health food store. This will be far less of an advantage now, as while Demeter International is still obscure, there are a number of empty claims made to try to say the same thing about food sold in health-food stores, and a confusing thicket of pseudo-certifications, logos, and assurances out there that one sees on food. But "local" still has magical power at the health-food store, and at the grocery store.
2) Making Comb Honey. (Ross Rounds) after apple pollination with my non biodynamic hives. VA had a consistent Tulip Poplar bloom, and the Elks National Home was nearby, the home of 200+ elderly men who preferred comb honey, and due to medications and age, could neither drink nor smoke. Honey was one of their few indulgences, and I was their drug dealer. Another niche, with price being no object. Sadly the demographic for comb honey has mostly died off, and it is now an oddity rather than a preferred form of honey.
3) Opening A Bakery. My late wife baked, bought a used deck oven and proofing rack, and started baking for local restaurants. That expanded to 5 bakeries in 4 towns, and each used only my honey. A captive market pays well for honey, but this required significant capital investment, as bakeries need lots of toys, and people willing to get up at 3am every day.
4) Pollination Fees Payable In Fall. This was a simple thing, as growers lay out a lot of money in spring, and many have to borrow the money. I could afford to wait, and take my payment as a literal "percentage of the crop" as defined by the price at which the grower sold his crop, when he sold his crop. This eliminated distrust, as I had an inherent incentive to do the best job possible, and it also permitted a premium price, as growers are much more generous when they actually have cash in their pockets. Some even paid bonuses. No one tried to stiff me, as I was waiting until they got paid. This meant that I had to be financially sustainable myself, but I had already made my money in supercomputers, so beekeeping was supposed to be a "retirement hobby".
5) Diversification. I also grew 650 acres of high-grade horse hay for the dressage, jumping, and show horses that orbited the massive Virginia Horse Center in Lexington. I contracted out everything, liming the soil in winter, overseeding, cutting, bailing. My neighboring dairy farmers had all the haying equipment one could ever want, and hay that gets rained on when drying is fit only for cows, so in some years, they even round-bailed and bought entire cuttings of my hay, rather than making me square bales. In hay, you are profitable only about 1 out of 3 years, but the profits are massive when selling to the show horse crowd, as they think nothing of buy things like their own indoor practice rings, so one simply makes the best possible product on a "cost is no issue" basis, and charges accordingly.
6) Expansion By Acquisition. West VA prototyped a portable woodenware autoclave in the early 1990s, and I copied them, generating my steam with a salvaged 3-meter home satellite TV dish covered with reflective mylar and a clockwork sun-tracking mechanism. It took a massive amount of paraffin, but I could buy surplus equipment, autoclave it, and have sturdy woodware that was both sterile and inherently preserved with no painting required, as it was all paraffin-dipped by the autoclave. This was less time and work (in my view) than the constant purchase and assembly/painting of new woodenware, and it was certainly cheaper, as my energy cost was zero. Boxes and frames that broke were cut up and used as fire-starters, which also made good Christmas gifts for the neighbors, as a single 4-inch long chunk of paraffin-dipped top bar burns as well as an M206 (magnesium) flare. Using 2 might start a chimney fire.
7) Volvo Wagons And Teenage Employees. My hives were hauled between pollination assignments on rented apple trailers hauled by a borrowed apple-grower's tractor. Apple growers don't need such gear in spring, and with a little education, a grower can be taught that bees can FLY, and hives can thus remain strapped down atop the trailers, eliminating all that loading and unloading of pallets with bobcats and skid-steers in the snow and mud. Used Volvo 240 ("Swedish Bricks") wagons from the 1980s were amazingly sturdy and cheap vehicles for yard visits and hauling gear, and when equipped with stereo systems that were powerful enough to violate the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, provided much-needed motivational music (Norwegian Black Metal, Punk, Ska...) for my teenage employees, who all came with stellar employment references in the form of "get a job" orders from the local juvenile court judge. (He reasoned that if they already had tattoos, they would not mind a few bee stings.) Being issued a "company car" with a never-empty tank and paid-up insurance was also a big draw, as yard visits were best done just after dawn, and the boys would then drive to and park at school, a privilege usually reserved for seniors only. I had black "Deathwish Beekeeping" team tee-shirts printed up to help enhance the social standing of the fellows, and a corner of my woodshop was dedicated to skateboard maintenance and repair, with tools and supplies provided. Some of my alumni still keep bees themselves, and I am proud of all the boys, as they all grew up to be solid men and excellent skateboarders.
8) Fall Requeening of Every Colony, Every Fall. Needs no explanation now, but at the time, it was unusual. I did not bother raising my own queens, that's someone else's specialty. By requeening everything, I had a far more predictable flightline for pollination, and this eliminated the inherent "swarming problem" of the NWC line of bees, which tend to expand very rapidly when fed in early spring. Gotta keep the bees in the box if you want them to make you a buck.
9) Continuous-Flow Extraction. For extracted honey, I run 9-frame supers, and ran three 9-frame hobbyist-grade extractors, each motorized with a salvaged motor from a scrapped washing machine turning a belt-drive. One extractor would spin, whole one was loaded, and the 3rd unloaded, and we worked 2 shifts to get the supers extracted and back on the hives asap. I avoided large-scale industrial set-ups, again buying a chain-flail uncapper, and later a vibrating-knife uncapper to feed the extractors, but my honey house was an existing circa 1930s creamery, as I had purchased a former dairy farm, so it had an abundance of ceramic tile, giant enameled sinks, big windows, and the ability to hose down the entire honey house to keep it squeaky clean. Process flow engineering is all about throughput, not peak capacity.
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