Honey is a unique natural product that has many beneficial properties. It is formed as a result of incomplete assimilation of flower nectar in the goiter of a honey bee. The composition of honey includes enzymes necessary for the human body, volatile and beneficial vitamins. It is used not only as a food product with a pleasant taste, but also as an effective medicine. Honey can be of various types: May, linden, buckwheat, heather, Bashkir.
Although the beekeeping industry is currently experiencing hard times, and the number of beekeeping farms is constantly decreasing, the business of producing and selling honey can bring considerable profits. True, it is worth counting on a stable income only if you have the appropriate knowledge and experience in this area, and are also willing to spend a lot of time and effort on servicing hives.
The profitability of honey production is about 30%. However, this indicator can reach 100% with proper organization and well-established marketing of products. And when selling honey to wholesale companies that sell products through retail chains, profitability may not rise above 20%. The wholesale price is half the minimum retail price of honey. Therefore, many private beekeeping farms that operate on a small scale prefer to sell their honey and other beekeeping products, which include bee bread, wax, propolis, bee venom, on their own. On average, one bee family brings about 30 kg of honey per season. If you want beekeeping to turn from a hobby into a business, then experts recommend considering the option of selling finished products through their own specialized stores and small retail outlets (this option is suitable only for medium and large cities with a population of at least 500 thousand people).
One of the areas of great interest to small beekeeping farms is the production of bee bread. Perga is pollen pollen preserved by means of a honey-enzyme composition (lactic acid), which is a grain collected from bees from plant pollen by bees. Perga is a food for brood of bees. It is rich in protein and carbohydrates. Moreover, it is a useful product for people and is in great demand in the market, despite its high cost.
There can be no excess bee bread, as bees harvest it in limited quantities, and it is impossible to stimulate a more productive harvest of pollen. In addition, it cannot be synthesized or forged.
Perga is of three types - in honeycombs, in the form of pasta or granules. The first option has a number of significant drawbacks, primarily, a short shelf life. In addition, it contains old brood honeycombs and the remains of cocoons of bees, so in this form, bee bread rarely goes on sale. Paprika paste, or ground paprika, is made by grinding honeycomb and adding honey. The bee bread in the form of granules is cleaned of wax and merva and dried. It has a long shelf life.
To organize and conduct the beekeeping business requires a lot of money. Especially large investments will be at the initial stage. For the first time you need 35-40 hives. One ready-made hive will cost about 4 thousand rubles. Experienced beekeepers build hives on their own. If you do not have such an experience, then it is better not to try to save. In extreme cases, you can buy used hives. But in any case, be sure to consult a specialist before making a purchase. Ideally, the beehive should be made of quality wood (the best option is spruce, fir, pine, linden, aspen, cedar). In this case, the wood is preliminarily aged for some time, since its moisture content should not exceed 15%. Since wood is a short-lived material, for the extension of its service life, the walls of the hives and the roof from the outside are first primed with linseed oil, pre-locking the cracks, and then painted with paint (white, yellow, blue or blue). In the West, foam is used as an alternative to wood for making hives. However, the latter option is not distinguished by durability and reliability. No matter what type of hive you purchase, it must meet certain requirements. So, the roof of the hive should be flat, covered with roofing or roofing iron with ventilation holes. The bottom can be removable or nailed to the hull with an arrival board. In the hive housing are nesting frames. Sometimes they can be equipped with special store extensions. The main entrance is located in the lower part of the front wall of the body, and in the upper part - additional. Ceilings are made of wood or canvas, and pillows or mats are used as insulation. Staples and ventilation nets are used as devices for roaming. An important element of the hive - the feeding trough - can be of a frame or nesting structure. The hive should be big enough. There are objective requirements for the size of the houses, which are due to the biological characteristics of the bee family. So, the distance between the walls of the hive and the side planks of the frames should be about 8 mm, the distance between the centers of the honeycombs of adjacent frames is 38 mm, the width of the streets between the frames is 12 mm.
Homemade beehives often have atypical dimensions, which makes it difficult to replace the case, store extension, roof, bottom, diaphragm, swarms, honey extractor and frames. If the size of the hive differs from the standard, then all these replacement parts will have to be made to order, which will significantly increase their cost. In addition to hives, you will need special equipment, tools (wax, fumes, wire and facial nets, suits, brushes, wax furnaces, chisels) and medicines. All this will take at least 20 thousand rubles.
Add to these expenses the cost of the services of a veterinarian (up to 10 thousand rubles). An additional item of expenses may be insurance for bee colonies. This will help to compensate for losses in the case of the death of bees as a result of external influences or diseases, loss of bee colonies (for example, as a result of theft). True, finding a company that insures farm animals, which include bee families, will not be easy. The insurance amount is set from the average cost of a bee family in your area and is about 400-500 rubles per bee family with a hive.
Honey is collected in two main ways - nomadic and sedentary. The first is most popular and is used for large volumes of production. The place for the apiary must be chosen very carefully. It should be located near honey plants. These include linden and acacia groves, fields of clover, buckwheat, grass field varieties. The most optimal option (and at the same time more expensive) is to rent individual sites for each honey plant. With the sedentary method of collecting honey, an apiary is located on one site and does not change its location. When using the nomadic method, which is considered several times more effective than the stationary one, the apiary is transferred from one site to another, depending on the period of flowering of the honey plants. For example, at first the apiary is set in the area of linden flowering, then it is transferred to the site next to the clover fields, then to the fields with buckwheat, etc. The nomadic method allows you to collect five times more honey, but it also requires large expenses, the size of which depends of the number of sites that you have to rent for an apiary. The choice of site has its own nuances.
For example, it should be flat (without bumps, hills, ditches) and at the same time have a slight slope. An apiary is usually surrounded by trees so that the hive is not blown by a strong wind and so that they do not overheat in direct sunlight. It should be located away from lakes and large rivers (but with sources of fresh water nearby), industrial enterprises and livestock farms. Moreover, in a radius of up to seven kilometers from your hives there should not be other apiaries. Land area may be small. The hives are staggered. The distance between the rows should not exceed four meters, and the distance between each bee family in one row should not be more than six meters. Keep in mind that, regardless of which method you choose - nomadic or settled, you will need a site for a stationary wintry, a workshop and a storage.
For natural and artificial types of honey and other beekeeping products (pollen, royal jelly, propolis, beeswax, honey wines, etc.), it is necessary to draw up a certificate of conformity of quality and safety of the goods, since these products are included in the Unified list of products for which confirmation of compliance with Gosstandart is carried out in the form of a mandatory declaration. To obtain a voluntary certificate for honey (previously this condition was mandatory, now it is fulfilled at will) and a declaration of conformity, you will have to go through a special state registration procedure and get a certificate from accredited bodies of the Federal Service for Supervision of Consumer Rights Protection and Human Welfare. In addition, since honey is a food product, all batches of honey must undergo a mandatory sanitary and epidemiological examination according to SanPiN 08/18/2019.1078-01, which indicates the maximum standards of toxicity and the presence of impurities. Based on the results of the examination, a sanitary-epidemiological confirmation is issued (hygiene certificate).
The quality of honey is evaluated and checked according to the state standard, which determines the requirements for this product. The certificate issued to the manufacturer indicates the indicators and their values characterizing the quality of the product. In particular, they include the content of sugars, water, tin, sucrose in honey, its appearance, smell, composition. In addition, the product is checked for toxic impurities and extraneous ingredients. Certain requirements are imposed on the conditions of production, packaging, storage and transportation of honey. Honey perfectly absorbs foreign odors, so if the storage conditions are violated, it quickly deteriorates. You can also issue a declaration of conformity of goods at the certification center, after which it must be registered with a certification body that has the appropriate accreditation.
Certification of honey confirms the compliance of the product with the requirements of GOST: GOST 19792-2001 “Natural honey. Specifications ", GOST 28887-90" Flower pollen (pollen). Specifications ", GOST R 52451-2005" Monoflora honey. Technical conditions ”and a number of others. A voluntary certificate issued for goods that are not included in the list of subject to mandatory certification allows the manufacturer to guarantee the quality of their products. To obtain it, you need to submit samples according to which the composition of honey, its properties, and ingredients are studied in certification laboratories. After the tests are completed, a protocol is filled out, on the basis of which the entrepreneur receives a voluntary certificate of conformity for his products. The cost of one analysis starts from 300 rubles.
If your beekeeping is relatively small (10-20 hives), then at first you can work on the apiary yourself. As a rule, small family-type enterprises are engaged in the production and sale of honey. In the future, as your company develops, it is worth thinking about hiring additional workers to service the hives and sellers in retail outlets.
For the organization of a small beekeeping farm, about 200 thousand rubles will be required (the exact amount depends on the number of bee colonies and the cost of renting plots to place an apiary).
Honey is also produced in industrial volumes. Of course, in this case, you can no longer do with a small personal plot near the city. Industrial beekeeping farms come in several forms. The most common of them used to be beekeeping farms for 8-12 thousand bee families for the production of honey and half as much when it comes to breeding bees for sale. Bee colonies are located in separate apiaries. Such a state farm has administrative and industrial buildings, the necessary agricultural machinery and its own transport for transporting beehives and products. Often, such enterprises, in addition to breeding bees and collecting honey, are engaged in the cultivation of cross-pollinated crops and seed production of perennial herbs of honey value. Due to restrictions on the location of the apiary, beekeeping is not recommended to be combined with livestock enterprises (poultry, livestock, etc.).
Beekeeping complexes (industrial bee farms) differ from state farms in a smaller number of bee families (from 2.5 to 5 thousand). On the territory of such a complex, outbuildings are provided (a winter hut, a storage facility, workshops for pumping and packing honey, for preparing feed, storage facilities, etc.). In addition, you will need a gas chamber to disinfect honeycombs and small equipment. Of the special equipment, a mill is used to grind sugar to a state of powder and a dough mixing machine, which is needed to prepare dough from sugar and honey. The number of workers serving the hives depends on the number of bee colonies on the farm. Typically, there are about 200 bee families per person.
In third place in terms of productivity is an industrial apiary for 600-1, 200 bee families.
Now the beekeeping industry is in a state of stagnation, so there are very few large farms left. Most entrepreneurs prefer to work independently on a regional market - through their own stores, specialized departments, and retail outlets in the markets. Larger farms, where the number of bee colonies exceeds 100, sell their products to resellers. Volumes of honey production for 250 families are, for example, about a ton per month. According to beekeepers, up to 80% of profits come from the sale of honey, and the remaining 20% comes from other beekeeping products.
If you intend to independently sell your products, then include packaging production in the item of additional costs. Many manufacturers save on it by purchasing ordinary plastic containers (or a more expensive option - glass jars with screw caps) and print ordinary stickers. Although, of course, consumers will evaluate your honey by taste, but its visual design is also of great importance when making a purchase. When your business begins to generate stable profits, it is worth considering the registration of a trademark.
Sysoeva Lilia
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