The Business of Beekeeping
Bees & Honey
Investing In Honey & Bee Keeping
Honey bees produce or collect a variety of products that benefit people. These products include honey, beeswax, pollen, royal jelly, and propolis (a sticky resin collected from buds and used as a glue in the hive). Although honey bees can be managed to produce large quantities of these products, they are even more valued for the major role they play in pollination, especially of our agricultural crops. While other insects, birds, and bats also are pollinators, people have little control over the actions or numbers of these pollinators. Honey bee colonies, however, can be easily moved and placed wherever and whenever they are needed for pollination.
Also, honey bees have additional advantages over other pollinators such as their availability in large numbers and their instinctive pollen-hoarding behavior. Without the pollinating service of honey bees, the cost of many fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, and seeds would be many times what it is today.
The Honey Business
Benefits Of Beekeeping
Having a honeybee apiary, which is the entire habitat where beehives are kept, can be a wonderful addition to your life as honeybees supply tasty and beneficial honey, and they naturally pollinate your vegetables, flowers, garden plants and trees.
Honey
Honey made locally from your own bees. The benefits of honey are many, starting with the fact that it is an excellent natural sweetener full of nutrients including niacin, riboflavin, pantothenic acid, calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium and zinc. Also, it doesn’t spoil, and can be used for a variety of health benefits, such as soothing coughs, boosting memory, treating wounds, potentially preventing low white blood cell count caused by chemotherapy, relieving seasonal allergies, killing antibiotic-resistant bacteria, providing fuel for the body, and resolving scalp problems and dandruff.
Bee Wax
Wax, a product of bees. You can utilize the wax made in your hive for candles, cosmetics, creams, lipstick, and lip balm.
Pollination
Bees can help make your plants healthy as they pollinate, as well as fruit trees in nearby orchards which helps the local economy!
Low maintenance
Bees work hard without much effort from you. Once your hive is up and running, it takes about 30 minutes a week for maintenance, and a bit more time for collecting honey up to twice a year.
Ecological conservation
Rewarding experience. Being part of a natural life process in which honeybees pollinate flowers and plants and create beneficial honey is deeply gratifying!
Bee conservation
There are many factors that are killing honeybees, and by keeping your own hives you can help conserve bees and protect their habitat.