To recap: A hobby is something that you spend money on and not make a dime. A hobby is something you do for your own enjoyment and if others enjoy it at the same time then it is doubly enjoyment. Fishing could be considered a hobby even if you get some fish to take home to eat. The reason this is called a hobby, is you could go to the store and buy a fish and not have to take the trip to the lake and get cold and wet while just sitting there hour after hour. Some people enjoy that. It is defiantly a hobby.

Now to turn your hobby into a self sustaining hobby. In order to keep your hands out of your wife’s pocketbook, you need to have your hobby bring in as much money as you are spending on it. That is called breaking even and I have put together a small plan to do just that. Now you can use this plan to work for one hive or 50 hives.

Step One

You need to keep records of the money you spend. It is just as important to know where your money goes and to how much money you take in. Without knowing where the money is spent and how much is spent, then how do you know how much money you are taking out of your household funds to finance your hobby? It could get as expensive as that train layout at the fair. Unless you have unlimited funds, you need to limit what you spend on the hobby.

If you have your bees at a place away from your home, then you need to know how much gasoline you spend going to and from your apiary. If it is costing more then the bees and honey are bringing in, then you need to move the bees closer to home. Normally, it does not cost to put you hives on someone’s land, so that is not a consideration unless the owners wants honey in return. That falls under negotiations.

Step Two

Keeping records of the equipment costs will give you an idea of how much honey you need to sell to break even again. A used two-frame extractor will cost around $100 – $300. That is a lot of honey sales.

Bee suits run from $60 – $150 depending on the type and quality. You need a smoker, hive tool, scratcher, veil, feeder, and wax melter to name just a few pieces of equipment you need. All this needs to be accounted for in your records.

Step Three

Other than the gasoline, all the equipment is one time purchases until they wear out and needs to be replaced. Now we come to the expendables that has to be replaced on a regular bases.

Plastic buckets break with use. They get brittle when left in the sun. Plastic bottles and glass jars will either be used and sold or broken. Either way they need to be replaced. If you use labels, then they have to be replaced. You will wash your bottles and  jars at one time or another, the detergent will be used up. You get the picture. All this has to be accounted for on record just to keep tabs on the expenditures.

All of the expenses has to be recorded. For instance, you go 50 miles to a fair. The gasoline and oil expenditures are recorded, the fair space cost so much. You have to eat, so you keep records on how much money it costs for each meal. If you spend the night, then the room rent goes in the book too. Don’t forget your helper, if you have one, needs to eat also. You are paying him/her, aren’t you? Then you are responsible for that room also, that is if you don’t share the room.

Step Four

Now that you have kinda got the picture and have your books labeled, you need to start selling your honey wares. 6 oz. Bears, 12 oz. Bears, 1 1/2 lb Pints, 3 lb Quarts, 6 lb 1/2 Gallons, 12 lb Gallons, 5 Gallon buckets, etc. This is your income. As you sell it, you need to mark it down. If you don’t worry about the amount of honey you sell, then you only have to count your money at the end of the day and record the net intake.

There is several ways to count your money, but I will not take the time to go through theses. If you have a question, then make a comment and I will get back to you via email and explain.

Step Five

Here comes the fun part. This is where you will see if all your hard fun work is fruitful. Monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or at the end of the year, you take you income and subtract your expenditures. The answer is your profit or loss. If you show a positive number, then you made a profit and will be able to stay out of your wife’s pocketbook. If you show a negative number, then you will either downsize or you will be forced to sneak into your wife’s purse and take the chance of getting caught with your hand in the cookie jar. Good Luck!

Conclusion

The easiest way for me is to have a separate cash box from the house’s petty cash and to have a separate bank account to keep the hobby money separated from the Household or main account. That way you will know how much you have at all times for your hobby/business. I know a man that decided to build a honey house so he could have a hot/cold/chemical room along with an extraction room where he could work out of the rain, cold, or hot temperatures. His wife was very upset when she found out how much it cost to build. He very calmly explained that the honeybees made enough honey that they financed the facility. It’s HONEY MONEY! He still had enough to supply his expenditures for the next year.

Have a Happy & Prosperous  New Year but remember to keep your veil close, your hive tool sharp, and your smoker lit.