Becoming a Beekeeper

broken sink

I would like to become a beekeeper and I would like some advice from established beekeepers.

For this year is it too late to get 1 or 2 hives?
Would you recommend getting bees without having a course done
Is there any particular habitat where bees thrive in. I would be hoping to put the bees in a piece of land with a lot of heather and furze as well as some trees.

bertie1

broken sink wrote: »

I would like to become a beekeeper and I would like some advice from established beekeepers.

For this year is it too late to get 1 or 2 hives?
Would you recommend getting bees without having a course done
Is there any particular habitat where bees thrive in. I would be hoping to put the bees in a piece of land with a lot of heather and furze as well as some trees.

It is not too late to get a hive this year. I would not reccomend getting bees without having done a course. They are too expensive to be messing around with.
There is a weeks course in Gormanstown on the 22 July for beginners as well as established beekeepers. Don't know what part of the country you are in but there are local associations running short ocurses over the winter for beginners with a bit of hands on practical in the early summer with bees. I suggest you try and tie up with somebody that is established if you can & go out with them a few times to get a feel for what is involved.

There are weekly inspections from April - August , treatments for varroa and and other illnesses they can get like all of us , being able to diagnose problems and sort them.Recognising that they need feeding if they do

The cost of a stock of bees , hive , suit, smoker, spare boxes , foundation, frames just to get going will give you no change out of Euro 1000.00

The furze bushes will give you pollen for early spring build up , the heather can be a late crop ( August / September) Is there enough forage in the area for them for the rest of the year. They will fly up to 3 miles to feed themselves.

There is more information available on http://www.irishbeekeeping.ie/

I suggest you join a loal branch where you make contacts and have somebody to ring when you have a problem ( because you will encounter problems)

broken sink

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunatley becasue of work I could not attend the course in Gormanstown. Hoping to do a course over the winter and also read up on beekeeping. I would like to make a small income from honey and I am just wondering how much honey the average hive could produce. I am based in kerry and there is plenty of forage where I live. Are there any beekeepers in ireland making an income from beekeeping?

bertie1

broken sink wrote: »

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunatley becasue of work I could not attend the course in Gormanstown. Hoping to do a course over the winter and also read up on beekeeping. I would like to make a small income from honey and I am just wondering how much honey the average hive could produce. I am based in kerry and there is plenty of forage where I live. Are there any beekeepers in ireland making an income from beekeeping?

Average amount a hive poduces 50- 100 lbs in my area , some do more some less , it depends on if they swarm or not.
It is an expensive hobby , you may cover your costs ( if you are lucky) but there are very few doing it on a scale that will give them an income they can support a family from. You would need 100's of hives.

oldsmokey

Hi..we're in North Cork, tried the bee-keeping for a while, but it aint for everyone..would suggest you contact someone local to you from the association, and spend a bit of time with a beekeeper..they're a friendly bunch!
Its no party witha summer like this..

broken sink

Yes the weather is a big problem especially this year. Once the hives are bought what is the biggest cost in beekeeping?

If you had a 100 hives producing on average 60 lbs of honey at 6 euros per pound that would give an income of 36000 euros minus taxes and costs.
Are my figures a bit crazy?

A jar of locally produced honey costs 6 euros per jar so that is where the 6 comes from.

The background to this is that I am keen to make a career change from what I am currently doing.

bbam

Hi.
Two things I see as a big hurdle.

Firstly 100 hives need alot of forage within a 3 mile radius, it will limit the honey collection ability. Now, one guy I spoke with says he has excess hives as it stops any one hive being over successful and so you have fewer hives that swarm. Maybe any beekeepers on here could comment on this?

Secondly it would seem that 95% off beekeepers are put off if you mention you are interested in a commercial set up. It would seem from speaking to a few that they associate large scale production with poorer disease control.

My advice is that if you are approaching an association for advice or training you should keep your plans to yourself.

I had a look at some finances I worked out and if you were to build up to 100 hives over 5 years. You wouldn't break even until the end of year 3 and your net income would be in the €15k region. This is based on 5 years without any washouts or hive collapses, retailing all honey yourself rather than wholesale to shops.
So, after 3 years of working for nothing you would be making less than the guy collecting the trollies in the Tesco carpark.

bertie1

On top of that you would have to build a puropse built honey house for extracting etc. , there would be no holidays during the summer time and the cost of sugar for feeding along with bayvarol etc is going up all the time. Not to mention you need a retail outlet for your assumed 6000 lb of honey . Selling a couple of hundred jars from your house is one thing , you won't be able to move it at Euro6.00 a jar with that volume. You would have to sell it wholesale at 1/2 the price you expect to get.

Qualitymark

Oh, you lucky thing - I'd *love* to keep bees but can't because I'm allergic.

The Irish Beekeeping Association runs lots of courses.

Make sure you plant lots of bee-beloved plants: borage, lavender, lemon balm, rosemary, fruit trees...

Steer clear of oilseed rape, it gives a nasty (to me, anyway) taste to the honey.

bbam

Do people expect this year to be any good for honey?

fits

ah hahahahahahaha.


no. I dont think we're going to be taking any honey off at this rate. (In the south east)

SC Kevin

fits wrote: »

ah hahahahahahaha.


no. I dont think we're going to be taking any honey off at this rate. (In the south east)

i would just like to add....

hahahahahahahaha to that as well!

I will be lucky if i get 1 super this year (about 10-15 lbs!) last year which was my first i got just over 30 lbs from 1 hive, i got a nuc last year as well but got it to late to get anything from it.

I currently have 4 hives and 1 nuc. 2 off those hives where nucs that built up thou.

trying to stay positive and not think about the honey part, just building up my stocks for next year and hope it will be better.

where abouts are you fits....im in south east my self!

broken sink

In response to some previous posts

Realistically building up to 100 hives is probably a pipe dream. If I had 20 hives in fives years time I would be doing well.

Is it the case that the people who sell honey at farmers markets have to have a purpose built honey house for honey extraction?

Plenty of forage in the area so I don't think I would need to go adding extra.

Good question with regards how honey production is this year.

SC Kevin

Realistically building up to 100 hives is probably a pipe dream. If I had 20 hives in fives years time I would be doing well.

A friend of mine has 100 hives and it took him about 5 years so it can be done, then again, he did have a bit of money which always helps!

There are different ways of building up thou, you can make up 2 or 3 nuc's from your strongest hive early on in the year and hope all goes well.

I did that this year and ive gone from 1 hive, 1 nuc to 4 hives, 1 huc this year. Im hoping to try out something i saw as my previously mentioned friend's apiries... that is to put a brood chamber on after extracting honey this year so i will then have 2 brood chambers in the 1 hive, they will hopefully draw it out and fill it up with sugar syrup/ivy/anything else that is still around and that will do them for the winter. Then early next year the queen will start laying in the 2 brood chambers. You can then split these and have 2 strong hives with the queen in 1 brood chamber and either introduce a queen in to the second or leave them draw down queen cells and hope she gets mated and boom...you have doubled your stocks!

Is it the case that the people who sell honey at farmers markets have to have a purpose built honey house for honey extraction?

Yes, if a health inspector ever came over, he can ask for contact details of the beekeeper (this is usually on the label anyway if you are part of the FIBKA) and for a honey house, as far as im aware, most utilities have to be stainless steel, have running hot and cold water, a separate area for washing hands etc

I myself use the kitchen, im sure its pretty clean (we havent got sick yet! ) but i only sell to a few friends, for selling to the public, your looking at all of the above and the cost that comes with it

Qualitymark

In Mary Leadbeater's 1813 booklet The Landlord's Friend, one of the tenants is mentioning that her hives paid half of the year's rent; don't suppose it would keep up today, but a nice little earner all the same.

broken sink

SC Kevin, with regards your friend who has the 100 hives do the hives take up a lot of his time to manage?

Does he earn a reasonable income from the bees or would you know?

Also would you know what kind of forage is in the area where the hives are kept? Lots of questions..

Given that local honey is infinitely better than the imported stuff ( i think anyway) and we import so much honey (2000 tons according to CSO) I thought it would be no problem to sell local honey even if you managed to produce 6000 lbs of it.

SC Kevin

SC Kevin, with regards your friend who has the 100 hives do the hives take up a lot of his time to manage?

He goes out 4,5 sometimes 6 days a week to different apiaries, plus he has a mating apiary at home which he also has to look after. so ya, id say a good bit of his time is taken up :eek:

Does he earn a reasonable income from the bees or would you know?

That, i wouldnt know

Also would you know what kind of forage is in the area where the hives are kept? Lots of questions..

I know of 2 apiaries that are in apple orchards and 1 that was near rape seed oil. The others however would have the normal forage that would be available in any field in the country.

Given that local honey is infinitely better than the imported stuff ( i think anyway) and we import so much honey (2000 tons according to CSO) I thought it would be no problem to sell local honey even if you managed to produce 6000 lbs of it.

You will sell it, there is a market there. The best thing to do would be to try and get in to a few shops, health stores etc. In the local supervalu down here, they sell honey from a local beekeeper at 5 euro. Id imagine that they bought it from him for about 3-3.50 euro so they could put there mark up on it. But you could easily sell 1lb for 5 euro at farmers markets/friends. Nearly all of mine last year was sold to friends for 5 euro and they loved it, 1 fella even bought 6 jars!

If you do the maths on it..... Lets say you sold all of your 6000 lbs to shops at 3.50 per lb = 21000 euro. Now of course thats not gonna happen but you get an idea.

But you've got to remember, the initial set up costs of the hives, sugar, disease treatment, more frames/wax for when the older ones need replacing, honey house, equipment. How are you gonna bring the supers back to your honey house, you will need a big car/jeep/trailer/ equipment for the honey house, extractors etc (some of these will cost thousands) are you gonna bottle it your self, probably if your gonna be producing that much so you will need bottling equipment.

So really, if your thinking of getting in to it commercially, if it were me, id go for 200+ hives but i wouldnt expect to be making much money for years

Qualitymark

Article in The Irish Times - interview with beekeeper and honey entrepreneur Sarah Gough http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/magazine/2012/0825/1224322791207.html

lucylu

We got our first colony beehive on May Bank Holiday, on the June Bank holiday queen swarmed ,spilt the hive to avoid anymore swarming, had 2 hives by the start of July but the stronger hive robbed weaker hive, the majority died so back to 1 hive and no honey but have a strong colony to get over the winter (I hope)

There was 2 of us who got involved together to split our costs...
our approx costs so far...
We joined our local association and completed bee course €50
Pine beehive incl 1 super and 1 feeder €190
2 x full beesuits gloves tools x 1 smoker €270
5 frames of bees €100
being optimistic 2nd Super & foundation €50
2nd Hive Cedar €240 extremely optimistic
Apiguard x 2 €14 - just finished 1st tray
hiveAlive €20
sugar €12
4 or 5 bee books €40

I wont add it up

Qualitymark

There's the odd hive for sale on adverts.ie...

Are you gong to dust your bees with caster sugar?

trihy

Qualitymark wrote: »

There's the odd hive for sale on adverts.ie...

Are you gong to dust your bees with caster sugar?

dusting bees with sugar is a waist of time as 85% of varroa are in brood
thymol at this time of year and oxalic if they need it in january is the best way and a lot cheaper than bayvarol

trihy

you will struggle to sell honey from 50 hives unless its going to a shop, bulk only gets somewhere between 2-3euro max per KILO

Qualitymark

trihy wrote: »

you will struggle to sell honey from 50 hives unless its going to a shop, bulk only gets somewhere between 2-3euro max per KILO

Bring it to the Dublin Co-Op for a few weekends and you'll sell it well.