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Beekeeping
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Getting started

Is beekeeping for you

By Dwight Davis, Founder

Updated

On this page7
Beekeepers who quit usually do so in year two, and almost none of them quit because of stings. They quit because the hive was awkward to get to, the inspections slipped, and the colony died of something that was visible in July.

What it actually asks of you

Attention on a schedule you do not control. Colonies do not wait for a convenient weekend, and the spring window where inspections matter most is every two weeks through spring build-up, which Penn State puts at mid-April to mid-June in the mid-Atlantic. That is the real commitment and it is not negotiable with the bees.

The time

Ten to fifteen minutes per colony per inspection, plus getting there and getting suited. Call it an hour for two hives, a dozen or so times a year, concentrated in spring. Harvest is a separate day and a messy one.

It is not a lot of hours. It is hours at particular times, which is a different thing.

The money

A few hundred dollars to start, with published beginner budgets running from roughly $150 for one hive and bees up to about $520 for a fuller first-year kit. The real figures are on what it costs to start.

It does not pay for itself in year one. A first-year colony is usually building comb rather than producing surplus.

The stings

You will be stung. Mostly on the hands, mostly your own fault, and mostly forgotten within the hour. It is the thing people worry about beforehand and the thing that stops mattering fastest.

The exception is genuine allergy, which is a medical question rather than a beekeeping one and worth settling before you order bees.

Who should not

  • Anyone who cannot site a hive somewhere reachable. Hives that are awkward to reach are the ones that get abandoned.
  • Anyone expecting honey in year one. You may get some. Plan on none.
  • Anyone who wants to help the bees. Keeping honey bees is livestock farming. If the goal is pollinators, planting forage helps more and asks less.

Who should

People who like a system they can read. A hive is a set of signals that reward attention, and the interest compounds because every season you understand more of what you are looking at.

And start with two colonies rather than one. It halves the chance of a first year ending with nothing, for reasons covered throughout this section.

References

Oklahoma State University Extension. Beginning Honey Beekeeping Equipment and Associated Costs; Beekeeping Multiproduct Costs and Break-even Calculations. extension.okstate.edu
eXtension Bee Health. Seasonality of Brood and Adult Populations; Beekeeping Equipment. bee-health.extension.org
Penn State Extension. Honey Bee Management Throughout the Seasons. extension.psu.edu
Written from published extension guidance, not from a laboratory. Local climate, local forage and the state of your particular colony override anything general said here.