Organizing a honey business is not so easy. To form an apiary on your site, it is important to take into account a lot of nuances. A correct understanding of the biological characteristics of bees, methods of breeding and keeping them will help a novice beekeeper to make his own business profitable.
How to work with beneficial insects
Before you start creating your own apiary, it doesn’t hurt to decide on your level of readiness to work with bees. Check if you have an allergic reaction to bee venom, otherwise starting a honey business may become irrelevant.
If you are not allergic, take some time to study the behavior of bees. These are sensitive and hardworking insects that jealously guard their honey. But they never attack first, unless someone disturbs their hive. You shouldn't have any concerns about this.
Before working directly with bees, you should wipe your hands with mint or lemon balm, as this smell calms the insects.
Bees cannot stand the black color or smell of wool. A white coat and a special mask should be your main equipment in the apiary.
It is recommended to use smoke to clean hives, as bees are afraid of it (it is considered an alarming signal of a fire). Under no circumstances should you give in to aggression. A good beekeeper is a calm, emotionally balanced person for whom everything goes well. Bees sense human nervousness too well and begin to behave restlessly too. Bees should not be touched or disturbed constantly. For example, it is better to inspect an apiary in the warm season, when bees are busy collecting honey.
If you seriously decide to take up beekeeping, try to organize your apiary according to all the rules. It is recommended to place it near plants with different periods of honey production. The best place would be a forest area or an orchard.
High humidity has an adverse effect on bees. It is not recommended to place apiaries near water bodies. It is better to place the “houses” for bees in a place protected from strong winds. Choose a site with a slight slope on the sunny side. Placing in lowlands and pits is the wrong decision.
To protect the apiary from the wind, you can use a natural fence of large and densely planted bushes. If this is not possible, you will need to erect a fence up to two meters high. Bees are very sensitive to electromagnetic waves, so placing an apiary near power plants is a bad idea. It is undesirable for there to be another apiary nearby that could create competition for you. The presence of agricultural crops treated with chemicals near the bee breeding area is not a good sign.
After you decide on the location of the apiary, you will need to prepare the area for placing hives, a winter hut and a honeycomb storage facility, taking into account the number of bee families.
The best option for a novice beekeeper is to purchase 3-4 bee families. As production expands, their number may gradually increase. It is better to purchase insects:
- In the spring.
- At the beginning of summer.
With this approach, you will be able to not only provide yourself with global reserves of honey for the winter, but also put a small amount of it up for sale.
The hives must be placed taking into account protection from the hot midday sun. When the temperature is too hot, the bees become lethargic and reluctant to collect honey. If there is little space, the hives can be placed at a distance of up to a meter from each other with entrances in different directions. It is recommended to paint the hives in different colors - blue, light blue, white and yellow. To install, you first need to drive in pegs at a level of up to 40 cm from the ground or make special stands. It is advisable to assign a number to each hive in order to quickly navigate your possessions.
Which hive should a beginner choose?
To place bees in your own apiary, you will need to make or purchase a ready-made hive. In typical structures, the thickness of the bottom and walls should not be less than 50 mm. Thin-walled hives are a bad solution for bees, as it will be difficult for them to maintain the optimal temperature inside.
When choosing, you need to pay special attention to the material. The best hives are made from linden, fir and well-dried aspen. The outer part must be treated with drying oil.
Modern beekeepers use two types of frame hives. We are talking about a vertical hive or riser and a horizontal hive. The expansion of the socket is carried out from the bottom to the top by installing additional magazines and housings. The riser provides an opportunity to create viable bee colonies. As for the disadvantages of a vertical hive, it has poor stability. It is also very inconvenient to keep spare queens in it.
In the horizontal version (lounger), the nest is expanded by installing additional frames. This is the best option for breeding queens.
Rules for collecting honey
In addition to information about bees and the location of the apiary, a novice businessman needs to fully understand how and when to collect the honey “harvest.”
You should carefully inspect the frame; if it is completely sealed, the honey is considered ripe. It is recommended to begin reducing nests at the end of summer. Unfinished frames should be removed, and low-copper frames should be placed away from others. The honey from them will be transferred by the bees to the hive. In bee colonies, frames with brood and full frames with honey remain. You don’t have to remove a couple of frames with beebread.
It is recommended to leave 2.5 kg of honey for each bee stash. It must remain sealed. If there is not enough feeding, beekeepers can use sugar syrup. The next inspection should be carried out only in September. At each inspection, the nests are carefully sorted. When collecting them, you need to take into account the strength of the bee family. Bees should nest tightly in the frames and have enough food.
It is necessary to take good care of the beehives in the winter - insulate them well with straw mats inside and furnish them outside. In spring, the front wall needs to be darkened a little to prevent direct sunlight.
Video: beekeeping as a business plan, honey business
The honey business is not only a useful and pleasant business. It can also be very profitable if you find the right approach.
According to statistics, most people buy honey from their friends or in large stores. The main problem of private beekeepers is that large retail chains cooperate only with large suppliers. A private owner will not have more than five barrels of honey in a year. And cooperating with large consumers is not always profitable, since the purchase price may not exceed 30-40 rubles per kilogram.
Packaging and selling your own honey to private farms is a more realistic option, but also far from making a normal profit. Experts recommend making a profit from mixed production, that is, from creating your own bee business and additionally purchasing ready-made honey. This approach will reduce packaging costs.
It is from the sale of honey that Russian beekeepers receive up to 70% of their profit. Other products (wax, propolis, matte milk) do not enjoy such success on the domestic market.
If a private entrepreneur is completely far from beekeeping, you should not immediately start your own apiary. Experts recommend working for some time in a company related to beekeeping, for example, as a manager. This will help to study the concept of this type of business activity.
Reselling honey as a raw material is an acceptable option if the monthly turnover exceeds 10 tons. Otherwise, you will not be able to receive more than 30% of the income.
As for costs, for packaging alone you will need to purchase:
- Special mixers for blending honey.
- Thermal chambers.
- Other equipment.
To analyze honey for quality, you will need a mini-laboratory. Not every company can afford such expenses. It's better to start small. But it is important to obtain a license to test honey in small laboratories.
If you are planning to create your own honey business, get ready for serious expenses. More than half of all investments made will be spent on raw materials alone. The total number of families must be at least a hundred in order to recoup production and receive a small income. But as the business grows and families grow, profits will also increase.
As for personnel, significant funds will not be spent on this. Almost all functions (packer, loader and assembler) can be performed by one or two people. Only during the honey collection will you need to hire a couple of workers. But it won't make a serious dent in your budget.
Despite a number of difficulties that novice beekeepers must face, the honey business is a profitable business. The demand for this product in the domestic and foreign markets is inexorably rising. Purchasing prices are also increasing. Today in Russia, the main trade turnover is provided by amateur beekeepers. But both large and small suppliers of honey have good prospects for selling it on the domestic market or exporting it.
The first honey harvest under the new law on state regulation and state support of beekeeping, adopted at the end of 2010 by the State Council of Tatarstan, has passed.
The beekeepers themselves, who have already managed to sell the harvest and are now preparing their hives for wintering, talk about its results.
The beekeeper pays for everything
A beekeeper with 20 years of experience, Ilya Ionov and his son Alexander from the village of Yudino dream of turning their hobby into a large beekeeping enterprise - the Ionov family apiary. And it all started in the late 80s, when money was “tight.”
“At first I helped transport a friend’s hives, and he suggested that I take up beekeeping myself. I didn’t want to, I said, I’m afraid of bees - if they sting, my leg would swell up to my waist. But then he persuaded me. I went far for the bees - to Ternopil, and they brought Carpathian bees from there,” says Ilya Ionov. “The first year they died with us.” The second year we went to buy bees again. Then we started reading the literature, asking questions, and in 20 years we have about 80 hives. However, this year only 60 of them were filled.
— Do you work using a certain technology?
— Everyone has the same technology, the oldest, but over time, each beekeeper develops his own method. We try to change the hives, we have all new ones, exactly the same. We use an electric honey extractor (to pump honey out of honeycombs) and are trying to switch to mechanized labor. There are special devices for unsealing honeycombs, but many people just do it in an old basin! Poison collection equipment was purchased.
— In the summer, your apiary wanders, why can’t you stay in one place?
- It’s possible, but you can sit like this all summer and not collect anything, you have to go to the fields, where there are crops. This year we tried a new system - we installed the hives not in one row on the ground, but in two or three floors on a trailer platform. It turned out to be very effective and mobile.
— According to the new law on the regulation of beekeeping, you cannot just come and set up hives; the land must be owned or leased.
— We come to an agreement with the forestry department and set up plantings, and in terms of money we come to an agreement...
— Don’t farmers pay you extra for pollinating their crops?
- This is true all over the world, but here it’s the other way around - the beekeeper pays to stand in the field. With us it’s the other way around.
— If we’re already talking about the law, did it bring anything revolutionary new?
— Unfortunately, and perhaps fortunately, I didn’t find anything new in the new law on beekeeping. The fact that it is necessary to install a two-meter barrier from neighboring areas is correct, but there are not so many of them outside the city at confectionery and chemical enterprises (apiaries can be located no closer than 5 km from them - ed.), so I think these are essential the measures will not affect beekeepers. The only good thing I would like to say is that the law spells out state support measures. Of course, if they were still accepted, it would be great. Time will show. And we, beekeepers, can only work and wait for a good honey harvest.
Business on dead bees?
— Is there a profitable beekeeping business in the Republic of Tatarstan or is it just a hobby?
- In most cases, this is a hobby, although you can make a business out of bees - you need to work, have more families. You can sell not only honey, it is the cheapest and simplest product. In addition to this, there are 11 types of beekeeping products that can be obtained: propolis, bee venom, beebread, pollen, dead bee (dead bees are included in medicines). For example, if 1 kg of honey costs 400 rubles, then 1 gram of bee venom costs hundreds of times more. But we need to find sales channels, and this is difficult for us.
— Does anyone need bee venom?
— Yes, although they write everywhere about the benefits of bee venom. Beekeepers are partly to blame for this. At one time they began to mix something into the poison to make it more effective, because it is very expensive.
— I would like to understand the economics of your business. What are the main costs? How much is left for development?
— The main expenses are gasoline, materials for the manufacture of new hives, and the purchase of bees. Every year we import new bees from the Carpathians to maintain a pure breed, otherwise they will mix with the locals and become less productive and very angry. Each queen costs about 1 thousand rubles, a bee package (queen and bees) costs 4 thousand rubles. We also need to buy foundation (frame for building honeycombs - ed.), medicines, this year we plan to buy a woodworking machine, complete the repairs, and the rest for personal purposes.
— What remains for personal purposes?
— If we sold 1 ton of honey for 400 rubles per kilogram, it turns out to be 400 thousand, of which about 300 thousand rubles remain net profit.
— Do they take taxes from beekeepers?
— No, if we also take taxes from beekeepers, then there won’t be any left at all. (Here Alexander Ionov joins the conversation - ed.). After all, such a profit is obtained once a year. And we would like the business to become profitable all year round. For this purpose, we opened the website “Ionov Family Apiary”. To not only sell honey, but also provide other services.
- Which?
- For example, informational. People always come to my father with questions, and he shows and explains everything for free in the old fashioned way. But why not make a business out of it? Conduct lectures for novice beekeepers, and made short films all summer. It would be possible to show how to breed queens, how to treat bees - there are a lot of diseases now. Arrange excursions with tastings. I even quit my main job, I want to devote time to this work. At the employment center I defended my beekeeping business plan and received a free grant. I probably reported for about 10 minutes, and then they bombarded me with questions: how to treat myself with beekeeping products, etc. There is demand. There is also an idea to create apitherapy rooms in Kazan.
— How to choose honey?
— It’s better, of course, from familiar beekeepers, because at the market or in a store you don’t know where and how it was prepared, what was added. Did you heat it up or didn't you heat it up?
- In terms of?
— They heat last year’s honey so that it becomes liquid. This, of course, can be done, but if you raise the temperature above 40 degrees, then honey loses all its beneficial qualities. And if you buy at the market, the traditional advice is that honey should flow in a continuous stream, lie down in mounds.
— Is life sweet for a beekeeper?
- Of course, sweetie, my hands are sticky all the time (laughs). But seriously, if you work, it is quite possible to live off the income from beekeeping.
Getting this valuable and useful product for a beekeeper is only half the battle. You also need to know how to sell honey, because you can end up with it and not know where to put this product.
Sales mechanism
It would seem that you have received honey, take it to the market and sell it. But it turns out that the population is not buying it as willingly as we would like. Therefore, the beekeeper is faced with the question: “Where to sell honey?”
Manufacturers of processed products and cosmetologists are interested in purchasing this product at any time of the year.
When selling this product, it is necessary to sell only high-quality honey, since if you sell a low-quality product, you can lose a buyer. Honey must be collected carefully and stored correctly. A beekeeper should care for his bees and do not hesitate to ask advice from more experienced beekeepers.
For retail sales, you can involve family members in this business.
You can find out where honey is purchased in bulk by talking with other sellers of this product or studying the market on the Internet. It is possible that in this way you will find a wholesale buyer to whom you will sell all the remains of your honey, and no further search will be needed.
Implementation methods
There are several of them. The beekeeper's task is to choose the right one among them that will not deprive him of either time or money. These methods include:
- retail sales on the market;
- wholesale sales to enterprises of various forms of ownership;
- Internet sales;
- sales through advertisements or advertising campaigns;
- sales at organized fairs, celebrations, festivals;
- sales to your friends.
These methods can be combined, then the question is “Where to sell honey?” will not stand in front of the beekeeper.
The latter method requires the beekeeper to have a large team of friends, since honey is not in high demand in Russia. Therefore, invite your friends who like your honey to let other people you know try it. Such a chain can continue indefinitely, which can ultimately lead to the appearance of a number of buyers who will be interested in purchasing this product from you.
Wholesale sales of honey
Advertisements for the purchase of honey in bulk can be found both on the Internet and in newspapers with advertisements. It must be taken into account that there are pitfalls here, which include the fact that most wholesalers work with batches of 500 kg or more; for each batch of honey you need to receive a declaration of conformity, for which you need to carry out chemical analyzes in accredited laboratories. And the most significant thing is that when selling wholesale, the beekeeper loses profit compared to retail sales.
If you urgently need money and quick sale of goods, you need to engage in the wholesale sale of honey. How to sell honey wholesale? To answer this question, you need to arm yourself with a computer with Internet access and a printer in order to be able to print out sales advertisements that can be posted at bus stops (yes, this method continues to be popular, especially considering that the main buyers of honey are middle-aged and elderly people ). In addition, you need to contact various confectionery production facilities located nearby, restaurants, teahouses, various hyper- and supermarkets, and consumer cooperation organizations.
Retail sale of honey
With retail sales, the question of where to sell honey does not disappear. When posting ads on the Internet, it is better to accompany the text itself with a photograph of the product. The text should contain information about the merits of the product being sold, without embellishment; it is better to advertise the organoleptic properties of the honey being sold.
In addition, when answering the question of how to sell honey at retail, we can recommend selling through an online store. It's better if it's your store. It is advisable to create a friendly atmosphere, sell a quality product, so that customers leave only positive reviews.
During retail sales, honey is bottled into various containers. The seller must have a container with him, with the help of which and from which he can give the customers a taste of the product. In addition to honey, you need to take separately products such as honey, propolis, beebread, and wax for sale.
Selling honey abroad
If you have tried the options suggested above, but they did not seem attractive, and you continue to be tormented by the question “How to sell honey?”, You should try your hand at selling it abroad. The most profitable countries for selling this product are Australia, USA, France, China, Germany, Japan, Greece. Particularly relevant is the sale of honey to China, which is ready to buy all Russian honey, the supply of which to this country in 2016 increased by 36 times compared to 2010!
When selling honey abroad, the wholesale price is much higher compared to prices from domestic buyers, but there are somewhat more difficulties. With this implementation, it is necessary to pay increased attention to quality, and, consequently, to documentation, to determine the buyer and transportation of honey.
The buyer can be found with the help of special companies, but they do not do this out of the kindness of their hearts, and part of the profit will need to be shared with them. You can search for it yourself by creating a website and filling it with information in Russian, English and the language of the country where you plan to sell honey.
The sale of honey, like any other product, requires constant monitoring of the market situation. Don't forget this when setting your price.
Transportation is usually negotiated and is therefore the least of the problems.
Documents are different for different countries. The following documents are common: confirming your activities, sanitary certificates.
Finally
Thus, the beekeeper himself must determine how to sell honey. This could be retail sales on the market, but this requires time and desire, or it could be wholesale sales within the country or abroad, which is largely determined by the capabilities of the beekeeper.
It’s been a month since I rented a place to sell honey at the city market. And it was like this.
On market days, my mother travels from the village to the city to sell herbs, vegetables and all sorts of things grown and collected on her land. One day he called me from the market and said that there was a free trading place - with walls, a roof, the front part was completely covered with roller shutters. “Come on,” he says, “let’s rent it, we’ll sell the honey, otherwise, in a couple of days, people who want to eat will take the place.” In general, think quickly.
I began to think - clients that they took honey from me via the Internet, they had already stocked up, new buyers were not in a hurry to appear on the horizon. And there is still a lot of honey - almost half a ton. You can, of course, give it to wholesale buyers for 20 UAH per kilo - and no problems. But it's too cheap, I don't want it.
At the same time, I understand that selling honey on the market may not provide any profit at first - there is enough honey there even without me. And I am a beginner, they will treat me with caution.
Okay, I decided to try it. I went to the market and met with the director. We signed an agreement. Retail space measuring 2.5 x 2.2 meters. Rent per month costs 300 hryvnia. In addition, there is no floor in the room - you need to lay it yourself, at your own expense.
I took the timber from the village, planed the boards, and laid the floor in a couple of days. There seems to be room, but we also need documents. Which? I began to study this issue.
First of all, you need an apiary passport. I designed it and wrote about it. Further, until this year, a certificate of form 3DF was needed - stating that I, as the owner of the apiary, have a plot of land on which the apiary stands. The certificate was given by the village council. Now it is no longer needed; an amendment has been made to the new tax code. This is good, I don’t have land - my father owns the plot.
As for taxes, there is also an indulgence for beekeepers. If your income for the year does not exceed 100 minimum wages (and our minimum wage is now a little more than 1200 UAH, that is, 120 thousand UAH for the year), then the beekeeper is not subject to tax.
What else? Every week you need to submit honey for examination to the market laboratory. The procedure is paid - 12 hryvnia and kopecks.
Neighboring beekeepers at the market said that the sanitary service also needs a medical book. I don’t have a book, and until they force me to, I won’t fill it out - it’s time-consuming and expensive. I am not sick with tuberculosis - I had a fluorography done.
That seems to be all, but one nuance comes up here: it is the owner of the apiary who must sell honey, that is, the one to whom the apiary’s passport is issued must stand behind the counter. If I am the owner of the apiary, and my mother will trade, then this is already a reason for the tax service to claim that I use hired labor. So, I had to issue an apiary passport for my mother, formally “sharing” my five hives with her. But now she has every right to sell honey on the market.
Then I spent several more days preparing the tables for the display case, making shelves, pouring honey into jars, preparing beebread, wax and other bee products.
As a result, we have such a trading place.
The assortment is as follows: honey (centrifuged, lump), wax, propolis, zabrus. That's all for now. I would also like to add dead bees, propolis tincture, and wax moth.
Profits are still very small. But I thought it could be even worse. Opposite our kiosk, there are hardly three competitors - from the "Honey" sign, the two kiosks to the right - are also honey sellers.
And next to the granny in the photo, my mother is selling vegetables. I sell honey for two or three days, then she works on two fronts for several days - she sells both honey and her greens.
Our competitors have already had their regular customers for many years; I am still a stranger to them. It will take time for people to see me, taste my honey, tell each other... In the meantime, my task is to show up more often, arrive earlier than the neighbors, close later, maybe lower the price a little at first, offer a product that no one else has. For example, I make candles alone, people are keenly interested, look at them as if in a museum, and smell them. The kids generally pass with their mouths open, their heads remain turned to the counter, and their mothers pull them by the hand.
Our people know very little about bee products. At best, it is honey, wax, propolis. That's all. It is often necessary to explain what beebread is and why it is needed.
I ask all residents of Shostka, as well as guests of our city, as well as their relatives near and far, and just everyone who knows me in Shostka, to come to your kiosk and try the honey from my bees.)) For blog readers - a 10% discount. My honey is already crystallized, but the consistency is like oil. Many buyers mistakenly believe that if it crystallizes, it means it contains sugar. This guy comes up and with a malicious smile asks if there is any sugar there. He smiles and goes to another kiosk to buy LIQUID honey, this is in October, when it’s already frosty in the mornings.
In general, there are enough curiosities. So, people come up and ask for flower honey. I clarify what is meant, because all honey collected from flowers is floral. Here is a floral sunflower, here is buckwheat with a sunflower. They look at me like I'm a sheep. No, they say, you need a FLOWER, you know? There is a flower shop nearby, where is yours?
In general, it’s an interesting activity, I’m not selling honey, but I’ll tell people something))
PS It’s already October, and one of my family still wears pollen, I don’t know why, everything has long since faded or frozen. And they have printed brood, and I saw fresh eggs. What do they think?
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Starting a business selling honey is quite simple. To create such a point, you will need about a million rubles or two million rubles, plus the room in which you will work, and for proper, fast and efficient work you need workers who will pack and unload honey. The relevance of honey is popular nowadays; many people who want to feel healthier do not buy the honey that is sold in the supermarket, but rather the honey that can be purchased on the street or market. According to buyers, such honey can truly be called honey, which contains all the beneficial and nutritional properties that are so necessary for the buyer. It’s very easy to implement a wonderful idea for opening a point selling honey, let’s see how to do it!
How to organize a business selling honey?
Here everything is quite simple: you just need to find a room of 10 square meters or more in which you will conduct sales. You can, of course, purchase a container and sell honey at the market, but this is a more expensive option, since in addition to rent, you will also need to pay for the container. Also, the room you have chosen must meet sanitary and technical requirements so that insects, bees, flies, etc. cannot be found in it. After you have found a place and employees at your point of sale, you can think about which suppliers you should buy honey from. There are two options.
First option
Buy honey from beekeepers. Although the price for such honey will be quite budgetary due to the fact that they do not increase the price, this price can subsequently be easily raised and increased by packaging the goods in containers. Packers are needed for this purpose.
Second option
This option for selling honey is also quite easy to find a common contact with dealer companies that sell and supply honey to retail outlets. The price for such honey will be much more expensive than that of beekeepers, but the price can then be increased. The advantage of such sales is that there is no need to hire a packer, since the honey is already packaged.
In these two options, beekeepers and dealers must request certificates for the products, which will indicate that the products are clean and do not contain harmful substances.
