a Peter Armitage snip followed by > a list of links and then a comment or two... 

Do you know of any research/publications that specially look at the apicultural labour process and the labour time involved in beekeeping operations?  Surely commercial operators who hire farm labour would know what their labour costs are in relation to specific management tasks.
>
http://www.agmrc.org/media/cms/budgetsheets_beekeeping1FINAL_14A02B2018283.pdf
 
http://extension.psu.edu/business/ag-alternatives/livestock/additional-livestock-options/beekeeping
accompany sample budget:  http://extension.psu.edu/business/ag-alternatives/livestock/files/budgets/beekeeping/Sample%20Beekeeping%20Budget-Honey-Pollination.pdf
 
http://www.uky.edu/Ag/NewCrops/introsheets/honey.pdf
 
http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/agriculture/livestock/honey-bees/management/tools/software

> these links are several years old and were provided to me by one of quadrate school peer group who is now a professor of ag economics at Texas A&M.  as far as the pure economic question you cannot know of a price to ask for the product you produce (or service) unless you have a good grasp of variable cost. often time the only difference between successful beekeeping operation is the concept of 'price makers' vs 'price takers'.  < this distinction here is the first group documents their cost rigorously and the latter group being those who have little or no concept of the cost of their production or service. < this concept falls more into marketing than a purely economic question.

> in my own experience labor efficiency is impacted by capital (ie labor saving equipment), organization of crews to do the manual labor (some optimal group size which in my own experience and observation is 3) and of course labors (crew) experience level. what may take a single novice or hobby beekeeper half an hour may only take me 3 minutes and with a crew of more than 2 half that time.  as pointed out to me by a novice beekeeper (but highly trained industrial engineer) the most time require for an inspection is determined by the small number of hives that have problems. then determining if you can or cannot remedy this problem is almost instantaneous for the experience beekeeper but is time consuming and perhaps impossible for the novice or hobby beekeeper.

Gene in Central Texas...


Gene in Central Texas...   

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