🐝 Small business
Beekeeping Profitability Calculator
Turn your hive count, honey yield and costs into an annual profit figure. The calculator also shows break-even honey price, break-even yield and a price-sensitivity table.
About the Beekeeping Profitability Calculator
Beekeeping profitability is not just honey per hive times honey price. A realistic model includes wax, nucleus sales or pollination income, the cost of replacement queens and packages, varroa treatment, feed, equipment depreciation, jars and labels, labour and the fixed overheads that do not scale with hive count.
This calculator separates revenue into honey, wax and other income, then subtracts hive-level costs, packaging, labour and annual overhead. That structure makes it easy to see which line is doing the damage. A hobbyist with ten hives and no labour charge may look profitable; the same apiary paying a realistic hourly rate often does not.
Break-even analysis answers two practical questions. The break-even honey price is the price per kilogram you need to cover all costs after wax and other income. The break-even yield is the kilograms per hive you need at your current price. If both numbers are far from your actual figures, the operation has little margin for a bad season.
The sensitivity table repeats the profit calculation at honey prices from 70% to 130% of your input. Honey prices move with crop size, local demand and packaging format, so a range is more useful than a single point estimate. Use it to decide whether to sell in bulk, retail in jars, or diversify into nucleus colonies and pollination.
How the calculation works
- Honey revenue = hives × honey per hive × price per kg.
- Wax revenue = hives × wax per hive × wax price; other revenue = hives × other income per hive.
- Total costs = hives × cost per hive + honey kg × packaging per kg + labour hours × hourly rate + overhead.
- Profit = total revenue − total costs; margin = profit ÷ revenue; ROI = profit ÷ total costs.
- Break-even honey price = (total costs − wax revenue − other revenue) ÷ honey kg.
- Break-even yield = (total costs − wax revenue − other revenue) ÷ (hives × honey price).
Reference values
| Item | Typical range | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Honey per hive | 15–30 kg | Varies hugely by climate and forage |
| Honey price, bulk | $5–10/kg | Wholesale or bucket sales |
| Honey price, retail | $12–25/kg | Jarred and labelled |
| Wax per hive | 0.3–1 kg | Cappings and old comb |
| Cost per hive | $150–300 | Bees, treatment, feed, equipment |
| Packaging per kg | $1–3/kg | Jars, lids and labels |
| Labour | 20–40 h/year/hive | Inspection, extraction, bottling |