Like Jim's indicated, local beekeepers could be a big help to you.
My $0.02:
>>1. How much money (basic estimate) am I looking at to do this? I am talking the entire shebang here, from >>capturing to be keeping (3 hives) to collecting honey.
It depends on what materials and skills you can draw on. Since you are proficient at making do the old fashioned way, you can save a lot of money if you want.
You will need some basic tools (hive tool, smoker - ~$30) and at minimum a veil for each person who will work the bees (from practically free if you have the materials to make your own to $20 for a basic veil to $100-200 for a good jacket and veil combo). You'll need new hives (free except labor if you have scrap wood on hand and can build your own, ~$300 total if you can assemble from ordered parts, twice that if you buy them pre-built). You'll need stain or paint. You'll need frames (free as above, or $90 purchased). If you want foundation, that's more, but you don't absolutely have to have it. Ditto for a few feet of #8 hardware cloth. You'll need some rubber bands for moving comb from the tire or the most rotted of the old frames to your hive. You'll need at least one feeder (free if you have a spare mason jar or gallon bucket, up to $30/each for top feeders). You might need some bags of sugar for fall feeding if this has been a bad year for the bees. For harvest, at a minimum you need jars for storage or sale (~$.50 each commercially), a few food grade buckets (probably free), and a bottling gate and filters ($20 will get you a fine set that will last for many years), plus basic kitchen implements you already have for crushing comb. If you want to extract, you can build a decent (if shoulder-wrenching) extractor for $30-50.
If you have a lot of solid scrap wood on hand, and basic carpentry skills and tools, plus the time to spend, you could get started in fine shape for under $500 total. If you buy everything in you might spend that much per hive.
>>2. How much honey can I expect to get from three hives and how often?
Depends on your surroundings. Is there a lot of farmland? Grazing? Trees? The "average" that gets bandied about a lot is 40 pounds per hive per year. Some years a single hive can produce 100+ lbs. of surplus honey. Some years you may have to feed sugar to every hive and get nothing back.
>>3. The bees will mostly be making honey from native pants and a variety of garden plants. Will this honey be >>any good?
Absolutely! I have never found a honey I didn't like. You're probably going to get mostly "wildflower" honey, unless you have very large concentrations of a single species nearby, so all the different nectars will be blended together.
>>4. Since I am not looking to do this as a hobby, but for honey production, is it worth my effort to get into it if I >>plan to just keep a few hives?
Depends on what the goal of the honey production is. Do you want to produce honey for your facility to stop buying sweeteners? Easy as pie with three hives. Do you want the bees to pay for their own upkeep while providing a task for the people you work with? Easy, and you can go as big or as small as you want. Do you want to bring in a small stream of side money to support other parts of the business? Doable, but you'll need more hives.
Commercial honey production?? If you have access to urban markets, you can sell your honey for $5-8 per pound direct to customers. Wholesale prices are more like $2. You saw the hives swarming every year - if you split the hive yourself or catch those swarms, you can probably double the number of hives every year. It's quite doable for a small honey operation to break even after the second year and pay for itself. But it's very hard to turn a major profit if beekeeping is not your primary occupation.
That's my thoughts after starting a small (non-honey production) bee business. Your mileage may vary.
Topic: Just another Newbie asking questions here? (Read 3879 times)