I also think the hours of study and experience are the most valuable thing
one can have. But as to specifics, with me one of the nicest things is
that keeping bees and landscaping help each other, so I would encourage
people thinking about this to try to look to see how bees could complement
what they are already doing. I need a truck to go to both jobs, for
instance, so that's an expensive piece of equipment that I have anyway.
Lots of my landscape customers ask me to bring a bottle of honey with me,
so that's time and gas I don't have to spend. If I get a call to fix
someones sprinklers next to an apiary, I can work the hives then, and that
saves more time and gas.

As to how much a hobby/sideliner can make, I imagine it's all over the
map. For me, I keep money from honey, pollination, killing yellow-jackets
etc.. in a separate account, so I've a good idea of what I really make.
For me at 100 (more or less) hives last year income was 11000 dollars.
Minus depreciation and 5.5% interest from my homeowners line of credit on
the 17 thousand dollars I spent 5 years ago to build up from a couple
hives (I somewhat arbitrarily funded one truck from the bee money) I recon
I made about 8 thousand dollars. That works out to about 15 bucks per
hour, which wouldn't allow one to even rent a house on the Central Coast
here, let alone eat three meals per day. But since I can do it when the
contracting is slow, and since I get lots of contracting work in the
course of working with the bees, and since I love it, it 's worth doing,
and I think fair to say profitable. At least it's a welcome break from
digging irrigation trenches all day.

Oh, and honey money is usually cash!

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