Economics of beekeeping

[Michael Thayne]

Low-Tech Companion 3 has a bit of info on beekeeping:

A single hive can produce up to 20 lbs. of honey and half as much wax; however, it must be destroyed to harvest it, and requires years to rebuild. An acre supports up to five hives.

However, beekeeping didn't make it into the Pyramid articles "At Play in the Fields" (from Pyramid #3/33) or "Lord of the Manor" (from #3/52). The information from LTC3 also isn't quite specific enough to come up with an "Lord of the Manor"-style entry for beekeeping. 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, how much those things sell for, whether beekeeping land can overlap with land used for other things (I assume the answer is yes?) and the labor requirements (could this be something like silk where you can do all the work at times of year when the need for farm labor is at a low ebb?) I could guess at many of these things but many of my naive guesses seem to make beekeeping implausibly lucrative. Does anyone have any idea what some plausible numbers might be?

[TGLS]

From my brief research, modern beekeepers can produce new honey in about a year. They also can recover honeycombs without destroying the give, and can supply new hives with HFCS to start them off more easily. So a plausible answer could be at least 3 years.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by TGLS

From my brief research, modern beekeepers can produce new honey in about a year. They also can recover honeycombs without destroying the give, and can supply new hives with HFCS to start them off more easily. So a plausible answer could be at least 3 years.

I'm mostly interested in how things work at TL1-4, and my sense is that it's only relatively recently that non-destructive methods of harvesting wax and honey from hives became the norm (though possibly they've been practiced in some places much longer).

[The Colonel]

Apparently a key part of rebuilding a destroyed hive is actually catching a swarm to live in it - if you can get a swarm in place early enough in the year, you can get a honey crop by winter (hence the "swarm in May" rhyme).
The destructive nature of harvesting depends on your hive building technology - could consider it a tech advance but I'm not sure what TLs it occurs at.

[Anthony]

There is some unclear evidence for non-destructive beekeeping being very old; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beekeeping#Hive_designs

This is one of many areas where it's probably easier to do your own research rather than expect an RPG book to answer your questions.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Anthony

There is some unclear evidence for non-destructive beekeeping being very old; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beekeeping#Hive_designs

This is one of many areas where it's probably easier to do your own research rather than expect an RPG book to answer your questions.

You would think that, but then Matt Riggsby's and Bill Stoddard's works address a lot of questions you wouldn't expect to find answered in an RPG book, especially if you're, say, a GM or other world-builder who can make do with plausible guesswork.

[mburr0003]

Oh hey, my family actually does this for a living (okay my extended family)...

Old ways: Yes, you absolutely can harvest without destroying at TL 3-4 (possibly even earlier). The main reason hives tended to get destroyed was more to do with hives splitting and the slower nature of hive build up in the past, so a hive might actually be in decline by the time a beekeeper might decide it was time to harvest (also because you're literally taking the bee's winter food, so... yeah the hive might not survive the winter anyway). If you're in an area that's conducive to running an apiary (plenty of blossoming plants or rotating harvest crops, relatively warm temperature for a good part of the year, etc) and the beekeeper can afford to feed the bees over the winter (or heavily supplement them with sugar in the fall to restock), or in a climate with "no winter", a hive can produce every year. Otherwise, it's likely to be bi-yearly or even longer if conditions are particularly poor (or you're just getting significantly lower yields).

From what I gathered from family (back in the day) they tended to prefer small harvests from different hives every other month (so any given hive get's a month off between harvests), but this is Florida, we don't really have winter, and they have so many hives it's more a 'corporation' than a family business (but I'm also under the impression that's how great-grandpa did it when it was just the family). For other climates bees are likely to be less productive, or it might be healthier to harvest less frequently. Granted that was almost 40 years ago, so techniques may have shifted, and they did "low destructive methods" rather then non or completely destructive methods - they'd harvest half a hive, and replace half the harvested comb back in the hive after it was drained, the other half was used either to sell as "comb in" honey, or used for new hive boxes, to make candles, or just to save for hives that needed it (if the bees were sick, or it was a particularly bad year, etc - reusing old wax saves on bee work).

Now, they run basically "pure" clover hives, so results will be different based on different flowering plants.

For every 4-5 active hives they tended to have one empty hive ready for if a hive needed to split or they found a hive that needed rescuing, or for when a random hive just wanted to move in and bee kept.

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...

For destructive TL 3-4, that's about two-three years of hive growth. If you're practicing non-destructive methods you're getting about a half of that honey per hive and maybe a quarter of the wax. Unless you can afford to completely supplement the hive on sugars (and pollen proteins) in the fall and winter, and then even non-destructive methods can get a full harvest of honey, but you're still not taking a full harvest of wax.

...how much those things sell for...

Honey is a luxury product (even really today) and should be priced accordingly. How much does a pound sell for historically? I have no idea, that's not really my area of expertise.

...whether beekeeping land can overlap with land used for other things (I assume the answer is yes?) and the labor requirements (could this be something like silk where you can do all the work at times of year when the need for farm labor is at a low ebb?)

Yes and yes. You absolutely would use the fields you're tilling for grain, beets, potatoes, your orchards, etc as part of your apiary. In fact bee tended crops tend to have slightly higher yields.

As for the work load, some of it does fall naturally in Autumn, when you're harvesting crops, it's usually when the bees are done producing honey for the year. However you can absolutely do small harvests all during the summer months and completely forgo harvesting in the fall, you're just going to get a lot of smaller harvests (which is generally more work to deal with) rather than one large harvest at once.

But even if you're doing a single large harvest in the fall, you need to perform routine hive health checkups frequently, at least once a week or bi-weekly, looking for parasites, general bee health, are there problems, etc. That's about thirty minutes of work per hive depending on how complicated the hive box is, do you need to smoke them (the answer should always be no unless you don't know what you're doing or you have highly aggressive bees), do you need to supplement their food, etc.

I could guess at many of these things but many of my naive guesses seem to make beekeeping implausibly lucrative.

If you're lucky enough to be one of the old established companies... ahem, the honey industry is extremely lucrative. If you're doing it as a hobbyist*, it can be costly. If you're in the middle ground, it's like farming, you have good years, you have bad years, but overall it's lucrative enough.


* By which I mean someone just keeping "backyard" bees, in a relatively urban area, they might have a small garden, etc. For someone more rural, even at a hobbyist level it's likely to end up being more a "break even" thing than a "lucrative" enterprise (once you factor in the monetary and labor costs). Most rural hobby apiarists I know do it for the joy of having their own "homemade" honey, rather than to supplement income.

[mburr0003]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

You would think that, but then Matt Riggsby's and Bill Stoddard's works address a lot of questions you wouldn't expect to find answered in an RPG book, especially if you're, say, a GM or other world-builder who can make do with plausible guesswork.

If Riggsby doesn't pop in (or doesn't answer if you reach out to him) I'd also reach out to (E) and see what he has to say.

He's done some work on bee-keeping for his AtE farming thread...

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by mburr0003

Oh hey, my family actually does this for a living (okay my extended family)...

Yay, this is why I love these forums!

Originally Posted by mburr0003

Old ways: Yes, you absolutely can harvest without destroying at TL 3-4 (possibly even earlier). The main reason hives tended to get destroyed was more to do with hives splitting and the slower nature of hive build up in the past, so a hive might actually be in decline by the time a beekeeper might decide it was time to harvest (also because you're literally taking the bee's winter food, so... yeah the hive might not survive the winter anyway). If you're in an area that's conducive to running an apiary (plenty of blossoming plants or rotating harvest crops, relatively warm temperature for a good part of the year, etc) and the beekeeper can afford to feed the bees over the winter (or heavily supplement them with sugar in the fall to restock), or in a climate with "no winter", a hive can produce every year. Otherwise, it's likely to be bi-yearly or even longer if conditions are particularly poor (or you're just getting significantly lower yields).

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

Originally Posted by mburr0003

Honey is a luxury product (even really today) and should be priced accordingly. How much does a pound sell for historically? I have no idea, that's not really my area of expertise.

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.

Originally Posted by mburr0003

If you're lucky enough to be one of the old established companies... ahem, the honey industry is extremely lucrative. If you're doing it as a hobbyist*, it can be costly. If you're in the middle ground, it's like farming, you have good years, you have bad years, but overall it's lucrative enough.

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.

[RGTraynor]

Curiously enough, modern beekeeping is based around advances made by a pastor in the town I lived in up until a few years ago (and which had its annual Bee Festival last weekend -- there are permanent fiberglass bee statues all over the downtown!).

But with that, even as a staunch medievalist who insists on researching economic subjects for himself, I have yet to see anything about Matt's or Bill's work that leads me to question their scholarship in the least degree. I'm happy to place reliance on it, and am quite content to place similar reliance on mburr0003's expertise on the subject.

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

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.

Short of such things being perquisites of the crown -- and if so, what's the incentive to keep bees in the first place? -- honey's lucrative, sure, because it was the only significant sweetener out there. But the real lucrative bit was the wax. It had dozens of uses, and little else in its niche.