Bees are fascinating creatures and quite a few people considering taking on beekeeping as a hobby. But is it beekeeping the right hobby for you? I have come up with this post to help you decide!
If you love the idea of beekeeping and are wondering if this hobby is the right one for you, you have come to the right place. The answer is simple, beekeeping is an incredible hobby if you have the time, money to start and patience to do it right. It is a complicated endeavor and one you should only pick up if you are seriously interested in having your colony become a major part of your life.
Before I got into beekeeping, I was absolutely enamored with bees. Truthfully, even as a child, I was never afraid of them, so it was natural for me to get to love them as much as I have over time. My grandmother was a beekeeper, my parents keep bees so I guess it was kind of natural for me to get into beekeeping too.
Humans can learn a lot from bees. These days, as more and more colonies have a harder time maintaining the life of their hive, the spike in interest in beekeeping is certainly welcome. Bees are absolutely essential for the continued survival of so many plant species, so it feels good to do my part in helping the planet recover from the effect we humans have had on it.
Let’s get into it. In this article, you will learn more about why you should become a beekeeper and why you should not. And I will be as honest as possible to make sure that you really think this through. It is important to take pros and cons into consideration as you make your decision and to be honest with yourself.
Towards the end of the post, you will find a list of questions to answer to yourself. If you can answer ‘yes’ to most of them – beekeeping is the right hobby for you.
Is Beekeeping a Popular Hobby?
Absolutely! In fact, it is continuing to become more and more popular as more people turn towards organic foods and nature-related hobbies.
Today, millennials are increasingly choosing alternative lifestyles and many are going back from the city to farms and off-the-grid communities. This is great news for bees, as they have had quite a difficult time lately. Colony collapse disorder (CCD) has been ravaging colonies across the world, and it is becoming increasingly challenging to raise bees.
So we really need new beekeepers! Let’s take a look at all the great things about beekeeping first.
Reasons to Take up Beekeeping
To me, beekeeping was always an obvious choice for a hobby. I love bees. I love how they live, work and organize. However, I was surprised by the benefits of beekeeping.
There are so many pros to keeping bees. Here are a few:
- The rewards are pretty sweet
- Bees are relatively low maintenance
- Beekeeping goes hand-in-hand with gardening
- You can make additional income out of it
- Doing your part to help the bee population
- It is relatively cheap compared to some more expensive hobbies
- Working with bees is relaxing
The Rewards are Pretty Sweet
As an amateur beekeeper, you are unlikely to start producing lots of honey right away. However, the honey you do produce will taste better than any you have had up until that point. This is of course because it will be of high quality, but it will also taste great because you put in the effort to create something incredible. There is something great about reconnecting with a craft that has such a long history.
Bees Are Relatively Low Maintenance
Going into beekeeping as a hobbyist is great because you will think of the bees as your pets. However, this pet is super low maintenance and comes with sweet rewards. Like I have talked about many times, beekeeping solely for a profit is difficult, so taking that pressure off your operation will actually do it a lot of good. Read more about how much work is beekeeping here.
Beekeeping Goes Hand-in-Hand with Gardening
If you have a backyard garden or are a professional farmer, bees are heaven-sent for you. Bees are pollinators. They are an essential part of growing plants like squash, cucumbers, apples, melons, and strawberries. They will also do so much for your garden and the foliage around your home. Bees are an essential part of our life cycle.
You Can Make Additional Income
Bees are great for gardens. So, in addition, being great for your garden, they will be great for your neighbor’s garden, who may want to rent them from you. Farmers regularly rent bee colonies for pollination, and this may be an excellent way to earn some extra cash. Farmers are definitely willing to pay a lot of money because having bees around means a stronger harvest that year.
Doing Your Part to Help Bee Populations
It is getting harder and harder for bees to maintain their colonies and it will only get more difficult over time. So much of the food we eat grows because it has been pollinated by bees and nothing can replace that. Restoring bee populations has been the focus of so many farmers across the world. It will give you great pride to know that your hobby is helping our planet.
It is Relatively Cheap Compared to Other Hobbies
As I have covered in my other posts, it takes about $1,000 to set up a small, hobbyist, beekeeping operation. Although $1,000 seems like a lot to spend on a new hobby at once, consider hobbies like skiing, or being a sports fan. Some sports fans are willing to spend hundreds of dollars on sports memorabilia and I won’t even go into how expensive skiing equipment is.
It’s Relaxing!
What is relaxing to one person is stressful to the next, but beekeeping has helped many people take their minds off their day-to-day worries. Being outside and in nature helps and reconnecting with a time-honored craft like beekeeping can be transformative for a lot of people.
Here’s Why NOT to Pick up Beekeeping as a Hobby
We have gone over the benefits of beekeeping, but what are the cons? If you are thinking about becoming a beekeeper, you have to keep in mind that this is a serious commitment.
So, do not go into beekeeping:
- For the honey
- For the money
- Because it looks easy
- If you want things ‘here and now’
For the Honey
As an amateur beekeeper, it will most likely take at least a year or two to get your colony up to a point where it is producing lots of honey. You will have to spend a lot of time getting to know your bees, learning about their biology and looking after them. See my post here about how long does it take to get honey from a new hive.
It is honestly not worth it if all you want is some honey. It is a lot cheaper to just stop by the supermarket on your way from work, or, if you want better tasting, organic honey, just swing by a craft fair.
For the Money
This is an elaboration on the above point, but you are not likely to get your money back from beekeeping for at least a few years. At the same time, you can not hope to get more than 60 lbs of honey out of your bees for the first few years.
At around $8 a pound – if you are lucky – you will not even break even for the first couple of years considering startup costs of about $1000 and maintenance which you can expect to stack up to a couple of hundred dollars each year. Amateur beekeeping is just not favorable in terms of numbers.
Of course, if you plan to put serious time into beekeeping, there quite a few ways to make money from it but usually part-time beekeepers do not earn a fulltime salary from it. If you want to make a serious profit out of it, not just money on the side, then you will have to put in serious effort.
Because it Looks Easy
Although it may seem like all beekeepers to is swing by the hive every once in a while to collect honey, this could not be farther from the truth. In addition to the time you will have to spend learning about bees and their biology and the craft in general, you will have to spend some time each week inspecting your hive.
If you want things ‘here and now’
Beekeeping will not yield very quick results if this is what you are after. It will take time for you to become a good beekeeper as it will take time for you beehives to get bigger and stronger. Beekeeping is an amazing journey but you will need time to enjoy it to the full extent.
A Few Questions to Ask Yourself Before Starting a Hive
Are you allergic to bees?
This may seem like an odd question, but do you know if you are allergic to bees? Bee allergies are some of the deadliest in the world and many people are simply not aware they have them because they have never been stung by a bee. Have you been stung by a bee? How did your body react to it?
Have no doubt in the fact that as a beekeeper, you will get stung from time to time by your bees. Wearing a full-body suit will help, but, at the end of the day, no one is 100% safe. This will be particularly true for beginner beekeepers who do not know their way around bees and hives yet. At least I got stung quite a few times.
How cool are your neighbors?
Do you have a good relationship with your neighbors? How far away is their property from yours? Are they allergic to bees? Do they have small children? These are all incredibly important questions to ask yourself if you plan on keeping bees where you live.
Your bees, no matter how small your colony is, will bother your neighbors. Bees travel as far as a mile from their home to collect nectar, so it is not a very good idea to introduce a hive to a suburb or other urban area.
That said, if you plan on having your hive in a more rural property that you own that is separate from where you live, consider the toll that will take on you. Do you have time to drive an hour or two to inspect your hive each week? The last thing you want to do is start a colony and neglect it.
Can you dedicate the time needed?
As a hobby, beekeeping isn’t going to take up as much time as your other traditional choices. You’re going to have to check on the queen, how many eggs she’s laid and how frequently, as well as possible mites and diseases that can arise.
What really can take up a lot of your time is learning about bees and becoming versed in their habits so that you can pick up on issues and how to continuously manage their activities.
Are you physically able to care for the bees?
To give you some relevance, a box filled with honey that’s constructed of typical frame hives, can weigh at least 50 pounds or more. It does not sound like a lot if you are planning to keep two hives. But if you keep twenty or are thinking of taking up beekeeping professionally, you will need some muscle to do the lifting. The good news is that you can always ask for help and give some honey in exchange.
You will lose bee colonies – can you handle that?
What has unfortunately become increasingly more common in the beekeeping space is colony collapse disorder. It’s a relatively new phenomenon but it’s not the only threat to backyard beehives. There is a slew of threats to your potential beehive, including tracheal mites and varroa, nosema, as well as chalkbrood and foulbrood diseases.
The best way to prevent these situations is by educating yourself on the symptoms so you can identify potential signs early on. But you will not be able to save all of your bee families. Some might not survive the winter, some might fall due to pests. Although it is quite sad, it is a part of beekeeping.
But I like to look it in another way – when I care for my bees and do my best to help them, I am actually providing them with a higher chance of survival compared to the wild. I make sure that they have a quality home to live in, that they are pest-free, have a good source for nectar and so on. And it does outweigh the loss of colonies that I have experienced.
Is beekeeping the right hobby for you?
Ok, so we have already looked at why beekeeping can be considered a good hobby and what kind of challenges does it bring. I have come up with a list of questions which I think should help you to make up your mind. Here they are:
- Is the main reason to start beekeeping is something else than making money?
- Do you care about our planet and want to help it?
- Do you have patience and see things through?
- Do you like to constantly learn new things and skills?
- Do you have the time needed to keep bees?
- Are you sure you are not allergic to bees?
- Do you like honey?
- Do you have a place where to keep bees?
If you can honestly answer ‘yes’ to most of them, then I would encourage you to start your fascinating beekeeping journey.
How to get started in beekeeping?
If you read online about how to start beekeeping, you would notice that usually, tips start with buying something. Well, I would like to show you a different approach. I would recommend to start out by learning about beekeeping as much as possible and trying it hands-on if possible.
This will give you more insight into beekeeping before you even begin ordering beehives and bees and it will also equip you with so much needed knowledge about bees.
I have a post that has a lot of information about how to start beekeeping as well as links to many very useful posts about bees, how to pick the location for beehives, how to inspect a hive and a lot of information that is a must know to successfully start beekeeping. Feel free to check it out here: how to start beekeeping for beginners.