Here is what I know about the venom business, for what it's worth.
Honey bee venom is relatively easy to collect in considerable quantity, because
of the invention of the venom collector at Cornell.  Benton worked on this
at Cornell, and subsequently went to Penn State.  He then founded a company
called Vespa laboratories which specialized in the accumulation of venoms from
various wasp species (perhaps only yellow-jackets), by contracting with
others to collect and freeze live wasps, then dissecting out the venom sacs.
Vespa labs sold its venoms to pharmaceutical companies, especially (as I recall)
Pharmacia.  Because of the specialized and labor-intensive nature of the
collection, the venom was very expensive (especially compared with honey bee
venom, which can be collected in gram quantities quite easily).  Vespa Labs
was a considerable commercial success.
In the early '80's. Roger Morse's lab at Cornell attempted to devise means of
culturing yellow-jacket wasps so that a technology like the electric-grid
venom collector could be applied to them.  This was not successful, as the
colonies never grew very large.
I have encountered several people who made considerable incomes as free-lance
wasp collectors, for Vespa and I think other companies.  I have also been told
that the entire north american demand for honey bee venom is filled by one or
a few persons using the venom collector.
There is considerable pharmaceutical interest in the venoms of venomous
arthropods, and quite a few researchers on the subject.  Contacts would include
Mike Adams here at Riverside dept. of entomology, and Justin Schmidt, who works
for the USDA in Tucson, and also independently.
Hope this is informative.
Kirk Visscher