I have compiled a few notes to help you to be a more successful beekeeper. I also needed this information for myself. Here goes——

1. Plan: Long Range Goals. Think about what you want to accomplish with your bees. What are your goals? Do you want to keep bees for just the enjoyment of watching them as they work? Do you want to sell honey? Do you want to sell bees as nuclei to other beekeepers and/or new novices? Do you want to pollinate with your bees?

2. How would you go about accomplishing this? You need equipment such as wooden ware for new boxes, both brood and honey supers. You need to have frames for all of your boxes and that means foundation. Do you want to use wax coated plastic foundation, or real wax? If plastic, then do you want to use plastic frames or inserts? If real wax, then you need to have wires either in the foundation or you need to wire the frames and embed the wires either with an electric embedder or manual embedder for strength. Are you going to make comb honey, then you need a smaller super and comb honey foundation which is thinner than regular foundation for extracted honey. Or would you like to use ?

3. Are you going to use the wax cappings for candles, lip balm, and/or soap, or are you just going to melt all the extra wax for sale or trade to the supply houses? Then, my friend, you will have to have equipment for those things.

4. Pollination is a horse of different colors. You need to have a way to transport lots of hives to the target fields and have equipment to feed the bees for 6 weeks or so. This will be discussed at a different time in a different post.

7. Making honey for sale needs to be thought through also. You need an extractor of some kind and buckets to transfer honey to the bottling tank. Then you need jars such as pints quarts, half gallons, and gallon jars. Do you want to use glass or plastic? Is this honey all going to be for sale or are you going to give some for gifts for the various seasons? How are you going to present, wrap, or display it?

8. If you want to make bees for sale, then you really need nuc boxes. Sometimes you will sale just the bees on frames with frame exchange. You need ideally, new frames in your makeup hives so they will be nearly new to your customers and that way when you receive their new frames, they will not be getting a bad deal. Also, nucs would be good to have in your own bee yard (apiary) to help some of your own weak hives. Sometimes you will sell the whole thing, box, bees, top, and bottom boards. (This will be at a higher price than just the bees.)

9. Short range goals. How many colonies do you need or want? Where will you keep them. Do you have some contacts that will let you place your hives on their land? Can you get to them 24/7? These are some of the things you have to take into consideration now before you even try to get started. If you have a back yard or some land then you can get started right away.

10. Now is the time to think of the economics. How much money can you devote to your bees right now? As you progress, the sales of bees and honey will bring you more dollars for expansion in the future. How much time do you have to give to your bees? Time is a factor for how many hives you can economically handle by yourself. Fuel is a very important consideration. With the price of fuel today, you need to have the locations for you apiaries as close as feasibly possible. Again, equipment plays a big part in your plans. Truck/pickup and/or trailer is part of the equipment you need.

11. Joining an association (local as well as state) is an excellent way of gaining information. Then there are books, books, books, magazines, internet, and workshops. These are tools for information for planning and doing.

These steps are not meant to discourage you, but to inform you how to go about raising bees for enjoyment and profit without bankrupting your finances or marriage. Don’t think of keeping bees as a hobby. Hobbies are what you spend money on and get nothing back but enjoyment. Think of this as a lemonade stand. You have to spend some money to get started, but once you get your lemonade made, you can get money for your efforts above and beyond your costs. Now you can start expanding by setting up more lemonade stands in other neighborhoods to get even more money, even if you have to pay someone to help/work for you. This is called free enterprise.

See you at the Chautauqua!