A Living From Bees

By Frank C. Pellett

This fascinating book contains a complete treatise on beekeeping as a profitable enterprise. It is the result of a lifetime of the author's association with bees. Written in clear, concise language and including all the information one could want to know about beekeeping, this text constitutes a must-read for novice keepers, and makes for a worthy addition to collections of beekeeping literature. The chapters of this book include: 'Beekeeping', 'Business or Sideline', 'Keeping Bees in Town', 'The Honeybee Family', 'Activities Within the Hive', 'The Honey Harvest', 'Bee Pasture', 'Regional Differences', 'Need of Bees in Agriculture', 'About Beehives', 'When Bees must be Fed', 'Use of Comb Foundation', etcetera. We are proud to republish this text now complete with a new introduction on beekeeping

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nord Press
• Release date: Dec 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781528763646

Book preview

I

BEEKEEPING—BUSINESS OR SIDELINE

IN MOST localities the returns from the bees vary greatly from year to year. The uninformed, unfortunately, too often measure the probable returns from fat years rather than the lean ones. What counts with the beekeeper is the average return over a long period of time. If the average return is sufficient to provide the necessities of life with a reasonable amount of the luxuries also, then his location will justify making beekeeping a business rather than a sideline.

A friend of the author, a salaried man, kept bees quite successfully as a sideline for many years. His location was a rather uncertain one. Some years his crops were good and some years they were poor, but the ten year average was hardly sufficient to justify following honey production as an exclusive business. As a sideline, the bees paid him very well, indeed, for he sold as high as $1200 to $1500 worth of honey in a good year. This provided many luxuries and substantial savings not otherwise within reach of the family. He was a good beekeeper and his enthusiasm for the business led him to resign his position and depend entirely upon the bees. When a series of poor years came, he found it necessary to forego many comforts which he had previously regarded as necessary.

Another friend in a somewhat better location profited by the change when he decided to depend entirely upon his bees. By giving his attention to more bees, he was able to make up for the loss of income from outside labor. The bees paid for a comfortable home, provided for his family and educated his children.

There are large areas where a few hives of bees furnish a profitable sideline, which would offer scant return for a man who wished to make honey production an exclusive business. A few men have succeeded on a commercial scale in poor locations by means of careful management and widely scattered apiaries. It would seem wiser, however, in such a situation to combine honey production with some other enterprise or to move to a more favorable locality.

Under conditions when business is depressed and prices are low, large production is necessary, at low cost, to provide a satisfactory income. The beekeeper who can keep several hundred hives in one location, has a big advantage over the man who is so situated that he cannot keep more than fifty hives in one spot. The saving in travel, cost of rental of apiary sites and other running expenses necessary to operation of scattered apiaries, provides a substantial item of income.

A few men are making substantial incomes from bees, incomes that provide good homes, fine cars, send the children to college and give the family an opportunity to travel, Such beekeepers are nearly all situated where some major honey producing plant is generally grown in large acreage as a farm crop. Many of them live in the alfalfa and sweet clover regions of the west.

One of several apiaries owned by a beekeeper in the mountains of Colorado.

To maintain a high standard of living requires either a large volume of production or a high price. There are few places now where the beekeeper can get a high price for his honey in normal times and it therefore becomes necessary for him to increase his output.

The business beekeeper is looking for means of reducing his cost of operation and thus increasing the net return. Better bees, better combs, labor saving equipment are all important. More honey at less cost is the object sought. The coming of sweet clover has saved the day for many a bee man in recent years since it has made possible a great increase in the output of the outfit he already had without increasing his investment or overhead. In many cases sweet clover has made possible the production of several pounds of honey where only one was produced before.

One who is so situated that he cannot keep at least one hundred hives of bees in one apiary and secure an average of at least fifty pounds of surplus honey one year with another will probably do better to make beekeeping a sideline with his principal dependence upon some other source of income. If his location will support one hundred or more colonies in one spot with an average return of 100 pounds or more of honey per year, he may very well expand the business to the point where it requires his entire attention.

RAISING BEES OR HONEY

Not many years ago there was little to beekeeping practice except to hive the swarms and put on the supers. Management as we follow it now was unknown. Under such conditions the crops harvested were usually small, but since there was little labor and less expense in the care of the bees, the owners were easily satisfied.

If left to themselves the bees would usually swarm soon after the honeyflow started and a single colony would often make such a natural division several times during the season. Boxes or hollow logs served as hives.

In later years the observing beekeeper learned that it takes double the number of house bees to carry on colony activities in two hives than it does in one. When the bees swarm during the harvest, the number of field bees is thus correspondingly reduced by the demands of the extra household. The beeman now endeavors to make his increase at a time when it will not reduce his honey crop and he bends every energy toward getting all his colonies as strong as possible for the honeyflow.

The fact that a large number of field bees can harvest more honey than a small number is so plain that it is surprising that it took mankind so many centuries to recognize the fact. Modern beekeeping practice all centers in an attempt to build the bees up to maximum strength at the beginning of the harvest and to avoid division of the colonies until the harvest is over. The larger the number of bees in a hive, the larger the proportion of field bees among them. The old time beekeeper permitted the bees to follow their natural inclination which was to increase as fast as possible when conditions were favorable. At the end of the season, he found himself with a large number of bees and but a small crop of honey.

In the North, every natural process is speeded up because of the short season and nature concentrates into the summer period the same activities which farther south are accomplished in a longer time. Days are longer, plants grow faster, nectar is secreted more abundantly all to the end that the annual cycle may be completed within the time available from frost to frost. The farther north we go, the faster must be the pace to accomplish this result.

The large development of honey production in the Dakotas and on the western Canada prairies has been one of the surprises of recent years. In a region formerly thought to be too far north for successful beekeeping, we now find the largest annual crops of honey produced.

SELLING LIVE BEES

Along the Gulf Coast and our southern border states, we have a mild climate and a long growing season. The bees are active throughout the greater part of the year. As a result one cycle of brood succeeds another and the bees consume the principal part of the honey harvested in continuous brood rearing. Under such conditions the beekeeper rarely harvests such crops of surplus as are gathered in the shorter and more intense season in the northern states.

Within recent years, there has grown up a business of considerable extent of selling live bees in combless packages to beekeepers in the north. The Texas beekeeper whose bees have reached swarming strength by April is in position to take away as many bees as would issue with a swarm and sell them for cash to the beekeeper up north.

Many beekeepers in the south sell live bees in packages.

The buyer of these packages of live bees in effect buys swarms. The bees are shaken from the combs into cages made of wire screen and with each cage is shipped a young queen, but recently mated. On arrival at the northern apiary, the package is hived. The newly hived bees behave much as a swarm would do. They begin building combs and carrying in nectar and pollen at once. The queen begins laying and a new colony is soon at work.

In all our southern states the climate is much better adapted to the rearing of bees than the production of large crops of surplus honey. Accordingly the business of rearing bees and queens has developed into a specialty of large extent. More than ten thousand packages of live bees enter Canada through Winnipeg alone each year. In becoming thus specialized, beekeeping is following the trend of other industries where a single product is turned out in large volume. There are a number of dealers in the South who now ship several thousand packages of live bees and many thousand queens to buyers in the North in a single season. Because of his more favorable situation for honey production, the northern beeman often finds it to his advantage to buy his bees and queens rather than to raise them.

There is, perhaps, no agricultural activity where a thorough understanding of the peculiarities of the locality where one operates, is more important than with beekeeping. In one location twenty colonies may be the limit that can be kept profitably in one apiary. In another because of better natural forage available, two hundred or more may be kept together. In one place the honey may all be of inferior quality, bringing but a low price in the market. In another the honey may be of the best and command top prices. As already stated, the yield in one spot may be small while it may be high in another. Yields of 200 or more pounds per hive are not uncommon in places, while an average yield of more than fifty pounds per hive is rare in many localities. One’s location will thus determine whether it will be more profitable for him to specialize in the production of bees or of honey.

A LIVING FROM BEES

Many folks want to know whether it is possible to make a living from bees and how they can go about getting started. If one has a good outfit in a suitable location and understands the business there is no trouble about making a living from bees, but how to get into such a situation is not so easy to tell. Lack of suitable equipment, lack of capital and experience offer a serious handicap. Like any other business, it requires some time to master the essentials of honey production. The best way to start is to get a few bees wherever one happens to be, and proceed to learn the details of their care. One who is so situated that he can secure employment with a commercial beekeeper for a season or two will find that the most direct route to an understanding of the business.

There is always much encouragement in the story of one who has succeeded under similar conditions. There comes to the author’s mind, the story of one after another who have taken up beekeeping under a serious handicap and yet succeeded to the extent of acquiring independence thereby. So many come to mind, teachers who had found too great a nervous strain in their work and needed change and rest, men with incomes insufficient and whose jobs were uncongenial, housewives who wanted a means of earning money for themselves with something to furnish a means of self expression outside the home, and others who preferred to follow beekeeping to any other work they knew. Speaking only of those who have succeeded and whose dreams have come true, there are many such in widely separated localities.

One of the most successful was a housewife who became interested in bees as a means of finding something alive and productive for her small son. The mother found far greater interest in the project than did the son. Beginning with an initial investment of ten dollars, it finally grew into a large scale business needing the assistance of hired men and required the rental of several apiary sites within driving distance of the city in which she lived.

She is by no means the only housewife who has become a successful honey producer. Another with her daughter and the assistance of a hired man had apiaries aggregating 500 colonies of bees and produced honey by the carload. Like the first, her home was in a small city and her bees kept on rented sites in the country.

Again there is inspiration in the case of a cultured lady who was a teacher in a woman’s college. With the bees, she found work in the open, a liberal financial return for her work and the opportunity to spend her winters in a mild climate. All these things the bees gave to her and certainly the open air work and winter travel would not have been available through her former occupation.

The success of these women is mentioned because there are not so many of them engaged in out of door occupations and there is always interest in the unusual. There are so many men engaged in honey production as a business that it is hard to single out any particular individuals as offering inspiration to those who would do likewise. Many of those who write for information are in the position of meeting heavy responsibilities with no reserve which will enable them to undertake a change of occupation that involves any risk. With dependent families, they must meet the bills of the butcher, the baker and the grocer every month from current earnings. The only way out for them is a gradual building up of something which can be done without impairing their present earning capacity until the new venture will provide for their needs.

A man of this kind was a carpenter, a friend of the author. He started with bees as so many do with a small outlay and gave his spare time to them. His little apiary grew slowly for several years while he was learning the how and why of beekeeping. Finally he felt that he knew enough about bees to enable him to risk his all with them. Except for a short period of a few months when he was temporarily thrown back upon his trade, he spent the rest of his life with his bees. They paid for his home, provided for his family and educated his children. He had a wonderful time in the shade of his own apple trees and seemed to be one of the happiest of men.

A bookkeeper built up his business in much the same way and later came to depend entirely upon the bees. Of course, not all have succeeded, but no more do all succeed with any other line of business. One great attraction of beekeeping lies in the fact that it can be built up from a small beginning and the novice can learn whether or not he is adapted to the business without endangering the security of his present position.

One can start with a few bees almost anywhere, even in a large city. When it comes to making a living from bees, however, one must have a suitable location for good harvests can only be secured where there is plenty of good bee pasture within reach. If one happens to be in a good beekeeping region, it is possible to grow up gradually and safely like those mentioned here have done and finally arrive at the place of independence without risk or great sacrifice. If the local bee pasture is poor, the time will come when one must decide whether to move or combine beekeeping with some other occupation better suited to the locality. Bees go very well with flowers, poultry, small fruit, etc.. and many have found a way out through some such combination.

DON’T PLUNGE

Yesterday we had a caller, a young man who told an interesting story. A few years ago he was a shipping clerk in an eastern city. He became interested in the stories he heard of beekeeping in the sweet clover regions of the West. When he saw the honey that came from there, light in color and mild in flavor, and of uniform quality, so different from the amber colored and strong flavored product of his vicinity, he became enthusiastic.

With little money, he secured an old Ford car and with the daring and enthusiasm of youth, set out on the long journey of more than a thousand miles to become a beekeeper in the sweet clover fields of the Northern Plains. He could not foresee all the obstacles which he would be called upon to meet, a stranger in a new country, in a new line of business, and far from all his friends. The remarkable thing is that he overcame them all and the past season harvested with his own bees five carloads of honey.

Honey house at Jager apiary in Minnesota.

This story is not told with the thought of pointing to him as an example of what can easily be done with bees, for even in these highly specialized days, there are few men who are able to secure five carloads of honey in one season. The significant fact is that the bees furnished their own capital and built up a substantial business from a very modest beginning. Nearly every successful beekeeper started with a small outlay and built up with the earnings of the bees. Not every one is adapted to beekeeping and there are many failures among those who fail to grasp the fact that beekeeping requires careful attention to details. That one can begin with a very small outlay and build up slowly gives a special opportunity to determine one’s fitness and interest in the business with little risk.

It would seem that an enterprise which can furnish its own capital as it builds up slowly should very promptly repay borrowed capital which would permit of much more rapid growth. Strange as it may seem, it seldom has worked out that way. Those who have been content with the small start and the slow growth have learned their lessons as they progressed. Mistakes have not been serious because there was little at stake. Those who have plunged into beekeeping on borrowed capital without previous experience have nearly always met some disaster which proved their undoing.

Another very important reason appears to be the fact that when a business grows up naturally, it stops its expansion when it reaches the limit of its owner’s capacity for management. Not long since a large scale honey producer remarked that many beekeepers are successful with small apiaries and yet fail dismally when they expand to the point where they must depend upon hired help and divided responsibility. Large scale honey production is a business in which comparatively few can succeed, yet uncounted thousands find pleasure and profit with small apiaries kept as a hobby or as a sideline source of income.

The man who manages a small apiary in his spare time finds a net addition to his income. The one who has a large scale business and depends upon hired help, has many expenses and the overhead cost of operation gets him into the same difficulties felt by nearly every other line of business.

There are many indications that the day of high specialization is passing and that we will return to something of the simplification and diversification of other days.

There are many who are finding compensation in circumstances which compelled them to find relaxation in simple things. A physician tells of a prominent society matron who has found so much interest in her garden that he credits it with saving her life. The change to active outdoor life has brought relief from a very serious disorder.

Forty years ago beekeeping was a hobby with a large number of business and professional people. The bee magazines were filled with animated discussions written by men and women of this type. Of late the industry has suffered for the lack of enthusiasm offered by the hobbyist. It has tended more and more to become a commercial enterprise followed by those whose only interest was in the big crops of honey which could be converted into substantial showing at the bank. Now we see signs of returning interest on the part of the class who find as much interest in the bees as in their honey. This is a healthful sign, for the individual, for the industry and for the nation. It is to be hoped that those who see signs of another boom ahead are mistaken. For every action there is a corresponding reaction and booms are followed by depressions. It is far