In Business with Bees: How to Expand, Sell, and Market Honeybee Products and Services Including Pollination, Bees and Queens, Beeswax, Honey, and More

by Kim Flottum

Overview

Ready to take your beekeeping skills to the next level? In Business with Bees provides the answers you need.

This book takes serious beekeepers past the beginning stages and learning curves and offers practical, useful advice to move your passion into a part-time or full-time career with measurable results. This beekeeping business how-to guide offers all of the in-depth advice you need, in one place.

• Writing a business plan
• Finding the best sources for funding
• Determining what your facilities will be and how to acquire them
• Getting and installing the right equipment
• Cooperating with other local businesses
• Stocking inventory and managing warehouse space
• Finding customers
• Raising and selling queens, packages, and nucs
• Expanding pollination, including contracts to protect you
• Making and selling peripheral products from wax, propolis, and honey
• Organizing teaching, speaking, and planning events
• Hiring and managing your growing team
• Promoting your business
• Measuring your success

This book provides solutions for all your beekeeping business questions, from start to finish. With this knowledge, you can become as knowledgeable, confident, and successful in running a business as you are in beekeeping.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781631594595
Publisher:	Quarry Books
Publication date:	09/11/2018
Pages:	160
Sales rank:	525,824
Product dimensions:	7.90(w) x 9.90(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Kim Flottum (d. 2023) brought a rich background of plant science, honey bee research, and basic farming to his 30 years as the editor of Bee Culture magazine, where his main occupation was finding the answers to the multitude of questions that beginning, intermediate, and even advanced and experienced beekeepers bring to the table. He taught beginning and advanced beekeeping courses, traveled extensively to educate and lecture, and contributed to a variety of other publications on the basics of honey bees and beekeeping biology, the business of bees and pollination, producing and using varietal honeys, and a host of other subjects. He was the author of The Backyard Beekeeper, First Time Beekeeping, In Business with Bees, and Common Sense Natural Beekeeping. His books, magazine articles, interviews, and blogs are widely read for both their fundamental and advanced contribution to beekeeping knowledge. He was beekeeping’s leading advocate for fundamental honey bee safety, including ensuring excellent honey bee health, providing extraordinary forage, and minimizing the use of agricultural pesticides.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Transforming Your Sideline Operation into a Real Business 8

1 Growing Your Operation 12

Your Competition: What Else Is Out There? 13

Who Is Your Customer? 16

What Could Go Wrong? 16

Financial Planning 16

Research and Resources 17

Choosing Your Business Structure 20

Register Your Business 22

What Will You Need to Get Started? 24

Buy or Build? 28

Your Honey House 36

Insurance 40

Funding 41

2 What to Sell-Products Made by Bees 42

Forms of Honey to Sell 43

Obtaining Honey 51

Selling More than Honey 54

Your Labels and Containers 57

Internet Retail: A Hybrid 59

Selling Honey 59

Beeswax Products 66

Pollen and Propolis 72

3 What Else to Sell-Services by Bees and Beekeepers 78

Liquid Feed and Protein 81

Woodenware Suppliers 82

Business of Business 84

Education for a Price 84

Where Else to Sell 91

Think Local 92

Your Basic Catalogue 95

Pollination 104

Bees-Gotta Have Them, Gonna Want Them 110

4 Promotion 128

Finding Customers 129

What Are You Selling? 130

Advertising 132

5 Staying in Business-or Not 146

Find the Right Balance 147

Diversity of Revenue 148

Quality of Life 148

Too Much Success 150

Acknowledgments 152

About The Author 153

Index 155

Editorial Reviews

ENDORSEMENTS FOR BETTER BEEKEEPING:
“Better Beekeeping is the most lucid call to action ever written about land-based beekeeping."
—Tammy Horn, author of Bees in America and Beeconomy: What Women and Bees Can Teach Us about Local Trade and the Global Market
 
"There are numerous beekeeping books on the shelves that instruct on 'how to,' but Better Beekeeping is a book that explores 'why to,' which is essential for this ever-changing world of beekeeping today."
—Jennifer Berry, research coordinator at the University of Georgia's Honey Bee Research Lab, commercial queen and nuc producer, and columnist for Bee Culture magazine
 

“Where was this book when we started? I know that we could have skipped many of the growing pains if we would have had a book like this to learn from and refer to.”—Paige and Tom Bennett, cofounders of Bennett Apiaries, Inc. (Red Bluff, CA)

“This is a great outline for those interested in making their passion into a business. Here you will find thought-provoking questions and answers to many of the pitfalls that bring businesses to their knees.”—Kimberly and Ben Carpenter, EAS Master Beekeepers and the owners of Hungry Bear Farms, Ross Rounds,

“How many times has someone, fairly new to honey bees and beekeeping, thought about opening a ‘bee business’ selling honey, offering pollination services, making endless creative candles and plunged ahead without guidance? And how many times has that dream…turned into disaster? This book will show those dreamers the possibilities and realities of creating a successful business, either small or large.”—Ann Harman, international beekeeping author and editor

From the Publisher