Economics of beekeeping

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

What does "no winter" mean in this context?.

Eh, even for Florida this can be highly variable. See? Florida has very little winter weather of its' own. If "winter" equals "it freezes" that only happens when cold fronts from farther north blow in.

In the middle of the state where I am freezing temperatures probably average 1-3 occurrences per year. These are also usually not "hard" freezes where agricultural produce is completely destroyed. Indeed, the old lore has it that a "mild" freeze late in November or early December sweetens the citrus crop.

When we don't have real cold fronts it's probably no more than "fall like" by other locations standards sometimes with periods of several weeks when no daily high exceeds 70 F. Humidity may tend to be relatively high even in winter.

On the other hand, sometimes less dramatic "warm fronts" kind of float north and it can be above 70 f every day for weeks at a time even in Febuary. Humidity can be lower than usual too.

The farther south you go the less often it freezes and the more often it's "warm front" weather. If you go all the way south to Miami it almost never freezes and it certainly won't be a"hard" freeze.

As another measure, "cool weather" to me means "You have to wear long pants and maybe even a jacket". I'm on the far side of personal measures of when you need to do this. I have one casual "windbreaker" jacket. It's 40 years old and shows very little sign of its' years because it gets used so seldom. Other people in my gaming group show less cold tolerance and dress more warmly than I do.

[DeadParrot]

Another potential money maker for a bee keeper is renting the hives out to folks as pollinators. How much this was done in low tech eras, I don't know. But you could always rule that some observant orchard owner noticed that the harvest was way down in years when local hives were scarce and up when the hives were healthy. Just because it is low tech doesn't mean folks don't notice things that impact their ability to survive.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Eh, even for Florida this can be highly variable. See? Florida has very little winter weather of its' own. If "winter" equals "it freezes" that only happens when cold fronts from farther north blow in.

"Winter" weather is climatic conditions which are sufficiently cold to kill bees if they venture outside the hive for long and, more importantly, sufficiently cold to kill off flowering plants. Call it sustained temperatures of <45 *F for 1+ weeks. For areas at the northern or southern limits for beekeeping, those conditions might happen in early autumn and continue until late spring. For a historical European game, call beekeeping season mid-May to mid-September.

In the temperate and boreal parts of Eurasia and North America, shorter day length in winter also restricts plant growth and foraging time for bees. Even if climate change turns New York winters into something approaching those of mid-20th century North Carolina, short winter days will still keep bees from really doing their thing from about October 31st to April 1st.

FWIW, bees like an internal hive temperature of ~95 *F. Hive activity naturally warms the interior by a few degrees, but if the temperature gets low for long periods of time the bees have to go on climate control duty, shivering to warm the hive. When it gets really cold for long periods they form a ball with the queen in the middle and shiver to keep the queen and a core of young workers alive through the winter.

Really hot weather puts them on ventilation duty to maintain sufficient airflow to keep the wax from melting and larvae from dying.

[mburr0003]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

What does "no winter" mean in this context?

Basically what Pursuivant said. In Central Florida (where I live) and especially down in the Homestead area where my bee-keeping Florida relatives live, we don't get "sustained freezes" every year. Heck, it's maybe frosted one or two days in the worst of the 'winter' we get for last couple of decades. Slightly further north in Ocala they get a good solid frost/semi-freeze every year for maybe a week or two.

Frex, this last "not-summer" we got a whole two days where it almost dropped to 50 here. I almost felt like wearing a jacket... the offices I work in didn't even stop running the AC to make the building cooler...

For example winters in Greece are extremely mild compared to winters in England or the northern US, but there's still a noticeable difference between the seasons.

Central Florida has three seasons: Hot and Wet, Hotter and Wet, and Cool Dry (sometimes Wet). Every decade or so (we're late on this) we also get "OMG IT'S COLD I THOUGHT I LIVED IN FLORIDA". Okay I'm exaggerating that one a little, but it used to get pretty frigid in the occasional winter here, for maybe 3-4 weeks, enough that I'd have to wear long pants, a decent coat, and I'd still be shivering a bit without a hat. It hasn't gotten that cold since the late 90's.

Now mind, I prefer it to be about 70F/21C, I can easily tolerate it down to 60F/16C, but start to feel a wee bit chilled if it drops below 50F/10C and need a jacket, and prefer not be out if it drops further... mostly because I don't have winter gear anymore since I live in the land of eternal summer.

I mean, the bees in the neighborhood didn't even really stop making the rounds during "winter" this last year, my Mom's flower bed never stopped blooming.

Now we do get bad storms and hurricanes, but the hives will be taken in to shelter during those, but otherwise, Florida is almost paradise for bees. Almost. We do have other problems (dampness, pests, predators).

Though maybe that isn't so implausible—many of those luxuries were historically expensive not just because of what producers were paid for them, but due to the enormous cost of transporting them to Europe from China or wherever.

In this case also the fragility of your producers. Hive collapse can come on swiftly and surely and with TL 3-4 they probably don't have as many solutions to the problems pests, disease, and mold/fungus can cause. And you can't just use your stock seed to replant the next year, you've got to find new hives and resolve what caused the collapse or you're just inviting it again with the new colonies.

I don't doubt making honey is quite lucrative for modern industrialized farm corporations, but I've never heard of it being lucrative for medieval peasants (or their landlords). That doesn't mean it wasn't lucrative (there are lots of surprising facts about the pre-modern world that don't get much discussion), but it does have me wondering.

It's probably not as lucrative as some other 'crops'. It takes a lot of land to support hives, it takes some work, and honestly, most peasants are probably also doing it themselves... but for a lord who sees the investment as worth it, they could see that profit turn in moving their product to larger cities for market. Filtered Honey travels well.

[Phantasm]

Of note, honey is not only a sweetener but a preservative; food that's been stored in honey stays good for a while. It seems to me that medieval/renaissance era European manors probably had a family of dedicated beekeepers among their peasants/serfs who maintained the hives and collected the honey and beeswax at regular intervals, a portion of which the beekeeper's family was permitted to keep while at least half went to the lord's larder to preserve his own food.

A manor didn't have a measly 40 acres; they tended to have 4000 acres or more, split between grain or cash crops, legumes, root vegetables, and fallow for livestock. If the hives were kept near the borders between the three or four fields of the time, that can be a lot of honey per year, even if they only harvested from a given hive every other year.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Yeah, it seems right to me that honey should be fairly expensive. "At Play in the Fields" gives a suggested price of $14/lb. for sugar (while acknowledging this will vary a lot with time and place). It seems plausible that honey would be similar—but if so, other plausible assumptions make beekeeping more lucrative than many of the things in the "Luxury Crops" table in "Lord of the Manor"! Though maybe that isn't so implausible—many of those luxuries were historically expensive not just because of what producers were paid for them, but due to the enormous cost of transporting them to Europe from China or wherever.

You can't really intensively 'bee farm' though - a given piece of land will only support so many hives. Thus if there are beekeepers at all, they'll probably produce a certain amount of honey and some percentage of that would be sold at market or go up the tithe/tax chain, but it's probably not going to be a significant part of most villages' income (though if there's just one family running the bees it might be for them).

Also, its value inside the village economy might not be anything like the value wealthy city dwellers place on it, so the bee keepers could well not see great wealth from their honey, even if some middlemen make a nice bit of coin off it.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by mburr0003

In this case also the fragility of your producers. Hive collapse can come on swiftly and surely and with TL 3-4 they probably don't have as many solutions to the problems pests, disease, and mold/fungus can cause. And you can't just use your stock seed to replant the next year, you've got to find new hives and resolve what caused the collapse or you're just inviting it again with the new colonies.

At least they wouldn't have the same level of imported nasties, as we have today with hives and bees being moved long distances and sometimes carrying diseases and parasites along with them.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

For that you'd need to know how many years it takes to get a hive capable of producing 20 lbs. of honey and 10 lbs. of wax

Online searching indicates most wild bee colonies have a fully-functioning hive within a year. How large such colonies are (and how quickly they grow) I'm not finding any good information on, but considering modern beekeepers tend to harvest around 50 lb of honey (and only a few pounds of wax, but that's because they aren't destroying the hive - if they did so, presumably they'd get around 25 lb of such) per colony per year after a one-to-two year wait time (again, because the beekeepers aren't destroying the colony), I think those ~30 lb hives would be achievable within two years. But that assumes the colony is able to properly establish itself; failed colonies are going to be a factor as well. For something quick-and-dirty, I'd probably go with 1d years, with things like a particularly bee-friendly climate (or skill in attracting bees) being able to cut the time needed down.

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

how much those things sell for

Two price points for honey I found with a bit of online searching were 50 denarii per pound from The Edict of Diocletian on Maximum Prices from 301 CE Rome (there are other goods there you could compare to, like wheat or cattle) and around 0.6 pence per pound from 1350's England. For example, the Diocletian numbers have a cow at 2000 denarii; LTC2 has a cow at 1200 $G, implying $30 per pound of honey (and $600 per harvested hive, from the honey); I'm finding a cow costing around 72d (which I assume means 72 pence) in 1350's England, implying around $10 per pound of honey (and $200 per harvested hive). I think honey wholesold for around $1.50 per pound in 2004 while beeswax was maybe around $3.00 per pound wholesale, so whatever price you put on honey, you could do worse than doubling it for beeswax - but then again, modern beekeepers don't get as much beeswax per pound of harvested honey, so you could justify reducing the price on beeswax when destructive harvesting is used (as you get a lot more wax per harvest). I'd probably still be inclined to put its price as twice that of honey, simply because you get half as much wax per harvest as honey (so you can just double the values above to figure out how much you get per hive between the honey and the wax).

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

whether beekeeping land can overlap with land used for other things (I assume the answer is yes?)

Depends on just what the land is being used for. Land used to pasture livestock is likely to allow for overlap, particularly if there's a lot of clover or similar wildflowers that bees can get nectar from. Apple orchards are a classic - many apple orchards are also apiaries, selling both apple- and honey-related products, including outright selling apples and honey. But wind-pollinated crops like wheat, rice, and corn you probably can't have overlap with land used for beekeeping, as the bees would be pollinating what would be regarded as weeds - although I think years when allowing the field to lie fallow you could use for beekeeping (maybe have the bees located at the intersection of several fields so they can more easily rotate which field they're sourcing their nectar from).

Originally Posted by Phantasm

Of note, honey is not only a sweetener but a preservative; food that's been stored in honey stays good for a while.

LT also notes its use as a disinfectant in wound dressings, while LTC1 notes its use as a barrier-type contraceptive. It (alongside beeswax) had a lot of uses, not unlike silphium (although the latter appears to have been even more desirable).

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by mburr0003

Basically what Pursuivant said. In Central Florida (where I live) and especially down in the Homestead area where my bee-keeping Florida relatives live, we don't get "sustained freezes" every year. Heck, it's maybe frosted one or two days in the worst of the 'winter' we get for last couple of decades.

Yes, that entire week where the highs don't exceed 45F would be almost unknown even in Central Florida. For Homestead it'd be "nope".

In 1976 it sort of snowed at my house but you couldn't catch the flakes in your hand. They'd melt before they hit. You needed to set out a metal pan.

In Gainesville (3 hours north by car) that year they are alleged to have built a snowman but they scraped up all the snow on the football field to do it.

I never saw real snow on the ground until 1997 but that was in Atlanta (500 miles further north). They have snow in Atlanta once or twice every year.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

(hence the "swarm in May" rhyme)

For the benefit of any others like me out there that might be unfamiliar with this one:

Originally Posted by Oxford Reference

a swarm in May is worth a load of hay; a swarm in June is worth a silver spoon; but a swarm in July is not worth a fly.

Oxford Reference. Retrieved 5 Jun. 2023, from https://www.oxfordreference.com/view...10803100545424