I don’t think that anyone should expect to get rich on their hive. I’ve been carefully adding up the expenses of starting a hive. I wound up costing me over $350 each, so far, for my hives. I can expect each colony to last 2, maybe 3, years on the average and that the woodware and other tools could last 10 years. Spreading out the costs of a hive over 10 years with regular new queens, packages and foundation, plus the ongoing expense of sugar, medicine and honey jars I think it may cost as much as $200 a year to run a hive.
I can expect about 25 pounds of honey on the low average and maybe 50 pounds if my hives do well. Some hives might do better, but on the average I will guess 35 pounds as an average for all hives. At $5 a pound that’s only about $165 per hive. Most of it will go as Christmas presents to friends and neighbors.
A good hive might split from time to time and I could sell a nuc every other year for about $80.
I am thinking about teaching a local class on beekeeping that I could charge $10 for an hour from each student. I might make $40 a hive this way.
All in all I might make $245 a year and that is optimistic.
So if I make $45 a year net profit I will be doing well. In reality I don’t expect to do that well. I can hope to break even. I can hope for a bumper honey crop, but that would be offset by the statistic that 1/3 of all hives die over the winter.
You don’t raise bees for the money.
