If you are considering starting up a beekeeping business, you will want to know what kind of produce you will be able to get from your bees. The obvious is honey, but what else do bees produce?
Having bees around is important for the environment, they do not just make honey, they pollinate the flowers and plants, helping plants to spread and diversify. Bees are essential to helping plants reproduce.
Adding honey to a drink in place of sugar is a healthier alternative, as DrinkBimble.com knows. But, what else will you be able to farm from your bees once you start up your beekeeping business?
Turns out, beekeeping is actually quite lucrative!
What Equipment Do You Need For Beekeeping?
Before we get into what you can get from your bees, let us quickly go over what you need to get for your bees.
Here are some things you should think about:
- A bee hives.
- A single piece bee suit with thick gloves and wellington boots or something simple for protection.
- Hive tools to help inspect the hive.
- A smoker to calm your honey bees down when you are inspecting their hive.
- A feeder of some sort.
- A nucleus of bees. This means, you need a small colony, which you can typically obtain in the summer months. A beekeeping association will help you to get hold of some.
All of this should cost you less than $1,000, so getting started is not really an expensive venture.
Reasons To Keep Bees
Now, what you will do with your bees will be dictated by why you want to keep bees in the first place.
Obviously many people would like to keep bees for their beeswax. Since a single jar of honey could be worth $7 or much higher! It can be a lucrative business.
Some people will keep bees for biodiversity and environmental reasons. Do remember that your bees will need care and attention as well though.
Other people may simply be fascinated by bees, and want a new and entertaining hobby that will keep them occupied and help them to meet new friends who are also enthusiastic about bees.
If your aim is to keep bees for their produce then you will be delighted to know that bees can give you more than just honey, and you will be able to produce plenty of products from them, and make a nice profit.
Honey Is The Obvious Produce
Obviously, everyone knows you can get honey from bees. Honey is the primary delicious substance we think of when we consider what bees produce.
Honey can be quite expensive to buy as well, so having your own supply can save you a couple of dollars, but you could also sell it as well, and make a profit too. This is something that many beekeepers will do, even if it just works as an extra income.
However, if you want to generate an income from honey, you will need to have a few hives, but it is best to start off with one.
You Can Get Beeswax Too
If honey is not your thing, or if you want to use even more of what the bees produce, consider beeswax. This is made via the honeycomb of honeybees. It is the naturalist form of all waxes.
For each lb of beeswax a honey bee makes, the bee has to visit over 30,000,000 flowers! This is made as the bees consume the honey. And secrete this wax from their abdomen. This wax is then used to make honeycomb.
Young bees will bluster together in large numbers, in order to raise their temperature, then their glands produce slithers of wax and other bees will then harvest these and apply them to the hive.
Beeswax is great for many things, but most namely candles.
Bee Bread
Bee bread is something you may have not heard of before, it is a mix of honey and plant’s pollen which the worker bees make into granules and store in their combs.
Pollen can result in hay fever, but people often eat bee bread to help stop hay fever. This is actually something many athletes will eat to boost their immune system.
Royal Jelly
Finally, there is royal jelly. This is the substance fed to the queen bee. It is a white color and looks creamy. It is very high in fatty acids and proteins. Young bees produce this in their mouth glands, and feed it to the queen, who only needs a teaspoon to survive.
