Irwin,
I agree with others. You can do this. Involve your wife as others have said, try to get her involved in candle-making or some other extra marketing, and see if there are others around that can help you too. You local organization should include members who want to see you succeed and will help you out a little in the beginning years. If you have another beek locally who's pretty good, see if you can form a good relationship with them, or possibly even a partnership. You can make a little money at selling nucs sometime down the road as well. If you even have to go the simple route and keep them somewhere locally, all you need do is find three people who will let you put 10 hives or so each at their location. Many folks would be glad to do this just to get the free pollination. After you're established, you can look at pollination contracts and ways of moving them around.
Make sure your wife knows that there are ways for you to do this without having to go at it alone. I think folks have presented you with some absolutely great ideas, especially the one about using your church. If you need help during the extracting process, enlist your church's youth group or even your sunday-school class, and tell them you'll donate a portion of your proceeds in return for them helping you with the extracting so you can get your business rolling - this would be a great educational opportunity, and may help you establish a local market as well. If you were in dire need of help, others may even be willing to help you with the marketing, etc. as well.
There's a lot that you can do with a little creativity to make this work. Good luck