Years ago I knew a guy who made a wad in the rat race and retired to
beekeeping. He had about 30 hives. He overwintered them on a Gulf Island
off Vancouver were he lived and sold his honey. In the summer he hauled the
hives to a 160 acre farm he owned in the Peace River country of northern
Alberta. The farm grew clover and alfalfa for seed and the surrounding
farms grew canola etc. The beekeeper managed his hives intensively, two-
queening, rotating frames from the outside of the brood chambers into the
centre and removing honey frames from the supers daily. He claimed to
produce 18000 lbs of honey/year. One of those 'It's Funky To Be A Farmer'
magazines did a story on this beekeeper which got many people dreaming of
watching bees make their fortune. I was selling bee equipment for a large
supplier in Vancouver at the time. One day a lady came in and said she
wanted equipment for 400 hives. She and her husband had read this article,
quit their jobs, bought a ten acre orchard and planned to run their hives
on the orchard.

    The number of hives needed to make a living depends on the amount of
honey you can produce in your area and what price you can get for your
honey. Of course if income from pollination and other hive products is
avaliable then this has to be taken into account. An old beekeeper told me
that it takes ten years to make money at beekeeping; five years to figure
out how to best manage them in your area and five years to get organized
and do it. In my case I think its looking more like twenty years. I stay
alive full time with 400 hives but I won't tell you what I mean by staying
alive because if it sounded good you wouldn't believe me and if it sounded
bad it might reflect poorly on my reputation. In my experience you should
draw up a financial plan then multiply your expected expenses by two.
Dividing expected income by two works just as well.

Ted


  It may have been discussed in the past but the beekeeper I spoke of above
was a great believer in the 1/4 inch bee space. He believed that when
Langstroth said the bee space was 3/8 of an inch he was working with a
diffeerent bee. This beekeeper used straight end bars with staples to space
the frames 1/4 inch from each other. The frames did seem much easier to
remove with very little burr comb. If you want to do something eccentric
this may be an alternative to petroleum jelly. He also had twelve frames in
his brood chambers with a side entrance.