How i started a small business

B-b-but what about colony collapse disorder? I heard that most bee colonies die all the time?

MOST BUSINESSES FAIL IN THE FIRST THREE YEARS! WHY WONT YOU LIVE BY WHAT MY BUSINESS STUDIES TEXTBOOK SAID????

>this is what /biz/ sounds like

>>1075518
How much honey would you be getting from 200 hives?

>>1075518
>> Cont..

By that time i had more problems that just managing the hives, not that much, but small stuff in management came up.
> Market saturation... when i had 100 hives, selling honey was easy, people that you know some adds what not. But i guess my networking failing as when i started to have around 150 hives i had a problem, not enough buyers.
> WHAT DO...
Managed to find some mass buyers for export or what not, but of course price was lower than selling to ppl directly.. around 33% lower.

Also my land plot was running out, i mean 200 hives do take a lot of space, and other stuff like, storage and so on.

Combining that i was taking care of 100 hives and the other guy another 100 it was stressful, i saw that he is getting tiered too, i personally would have left, but i guess because he saw that i was working as hard as him or more made him stay. Had a talk and decided to get a third guy to help.
> Training was easier than before and he listened more, cause two(me other guy) guys were his superiors i guess.

Work load dropped again.
Recently i got a new plot, and starting fitting it, while the two guys keep 200 hives and me helping in the critical times.

> Plan is to repeat again the early steps in plot 1.

>Marketing wise no choice than to sell to the mass buyer maybe try to find their buys and so export myself.... Maybe joint the middle man guys while buying a producer too.

>>1075518
>yfw you get hit with Colony Collapse Disorder

Not so smug are you now cunt?

>>1075527

True hives die all the time, that is the shit part of the job. After all they are animals. And some times i have to just drop the towel and say well fuck it lost this one. Some of them are temperamental too... like we have this number 48, no matter what you are getting stunned. Thing is he is damn resilient and every split/hive i made of him was as aggressive and resilient.

Thing is in the long run your in a net gain in number of hives, if you are good beekeeper, lost hives can't be helped, but your job is to have fewer of those.

Also i live Europe, and my hives are in a mountain range, so no close by farm land... cutting profits down, but sure beats finding a 100 hives dead cause some corp decided to spray with X chem.

>>1075533
INB4 BTFO for stock/shitcoins/ getting fired cause you being replaced by robots/and any kind of investments in that line of thinking.
>>1075530
Honestly i believed it would be a lot more when i started, but i will run the math right now, might be off cause i don't have my excel in my face right now.

Will talk in % as i am not in the US and market might be different.

One hive gives on average 30kg honey a year. Which is only 50-52% of the minimal salary for 1 month . So i would need 24 hives and no expenses to make as much as a dishwasher or something.

While i was working alone with no help and had 100 hives i was making around 4 times the lowest salary with no expenses included.
Next 100 was only 3 because of they guy i hired. But now i was making 7 times the lowest salary.

Expenses amount to around 10% max normally(cause i do like keeping everything top notch). But i have not factored the replacement of the wooden box cause i don't know how many years they can last before i need to replace them.

I did a quick google search and the minimal hourly salary listed there seems to be 7,25 or 1160$ a month so i am making lets say 8120$ a month(without those 10%).

Of course expansion cost extra.

Pretty cool OP. Can I find your honey in Belgium?

>>1075561
Wait so you make nearly $2k a week?
Motherfucker that's awesome.

Thank you OP for this thread.
You're a great example of starting up your own company. I hope you the best and ignore the smug shitposters, they are on every board these days.

>>1075601
Seconded

Thoroughly enjoyed reading

>>1075577
Exactly mine i am not sure, I think maybe a fraction of it.

Hope so in the future, cause i said maybe i want to cut the middle man that use now for some of the honey. But that is a whole new beast, as far as they know, the middle man stores/mixes honey based on quality. Lets say that i produce 90% pure pine honey, someone else produces 80% pine honey, if the price of 85% is higher than both sold individualy the middle man will mix them. (By pure i mean mix of pine+something else like sunflower)
I think my middle man sells to cosmetics firms for sure, but maybe some of it for direct consumption. I really need to bring a lot of honey and bee products to be able to ditch the middle man and network directly to the buyers.
>>1075582
Yep i am in those lines of profit, I hope plot/site two doubles that. But it was not as easy trip, i had some damn stressful moments. Honestly i am happy with that i can make so far, but running this thing is on the back of my mine like a back ground process. I worked previously in a call center(back end support for ebay, no work directly with ppl mostly excel shit) and honestly when i was asked what you did today i was like don't know don't care.
> Biggest worry is to keep the two(more in the future) guys happy and not ditching... it takes time to train people. And if one ditches i have to flll in for him until i get a new guy. God forbid the two leaving or anyone, losing a bee keeper is not like hiring a waitress, hard to replace.

>>1075615
How do you uncap? I can't imagine you do 2000 frames by hand every month during the season.

Have you thought of collecting poison or royal jelly?

>>1075518
Bump for REAL business.

I <3 you anon

>>1075518
I apreciate this post because it has detail, lots will just say "hur dur dropship!" , you even go into the reality of the mental and physicial taxation of hours of toil on a man.

top notch /biz/ post

>>1075665
OP from home now.

I have though about selling wax, pollen, propolis ... jelly not that much because i am not that familiar with that.

Doing honey only right now, even though i am aware a lot of other products. I am also looking at like this: Every thing i take is in the end less honey. Like taking pollen means that they will have to collect more pollen for young bees. Which means less honey...

>in the end i have not decided yet, but its def a option later on.


> As for the guys that thanked for the topic your welcome guys. I don't really think i have much more to add, ask questions if you want.

> I am interested in to hear if there is other guys have successes stories!

>>1075561

Honestly, I've always wondered about bees.

It seems like the initial investment is rather small (just some land) and the results should be pretty good.

Do you have any advice on getting started?

Programmer here, I don't know jack shit about bees other than i like them.

>>1075929
I have a friend of a friend that does this local to me, and he makes most of his money renting three bees to local farmers(apparently you relocate the entire hive to their farm). Is this anything you've explored?

>>1075961
*The bees

>>1075962
Awww i wanted to rent 3 bees.

>>1075518
Bee keeping always seemed cool to me. Too bad I'm a pussy who's scared of bees.

>>1075518
I'm happy to be trained as a bee keeper. I'd do the first month for free as long as you set up accomdation for me to lay my head.

ATM I'm in a leg cast as I was in a massive motorbike accident. Some lady in a BMW came out on me as I was coming home from work. But in around 4 months i'll be fit and able and would love to start a new career.
[email protected]

( throw away email. So don't waste you're time trying to hack it me etc)

If you're interested let me know.
If i don't make the cut. No hard feelings

>>1075561
I'm actually confused as to how you make so much.. 30kg * 200 = 6000kg, honey goes for about $10.45 a kg here, so $62.7k before wages, expenses, tax, etc.

>>1076650
supermarket honey maybe, if you buy honey directly from someone who owns a hive its likely you do so at a farmers market, lots of health reasons to go this route and you pay for higher quality with a price premium

>>1076650
Because you can't into gross versus net.

>>1076650
Cause it hard to relate to the economical situation in every country. Like i am in the Eu, but not using Euro. Translating my purchasing power over countries or seas, just by looking at minimal wage on google is hard. Thats why i tried to show it with % instead of cold hard cash.

Because you are using $ i will assume that you are in US, but if the salary there is 7.25$ as minimal wage a hour and a jar costs 10.45$ its like a hours and something money to buy a jar.

But where i live you need to work 2-3 hours at minimal wage.
So my purchasing power is a lot stronger where i live compared to where you live it seems.

>IMO purchasing power is more important than exact number, cause as far as i know in NY you can make 1000$ as a waitress, but you may have the same purchasing power as in the middle of no where cause in NY stuff costs more.

>>1077079
10.45$( a bit more than a hour to make the money needed to buy a jar of honey)*

Sorry messed my my eng.

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Great post.

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Beads?

Very cool OP, my family is in the bee business as well. I do not personally own any boxes but my uncle and father own several thousand boxes in veracruz. They sell to an exporter who ships it over to germany. I know they are getting fucked by the middleman though. None of us speak german and we have no connections to make the deal ourselves.

>>1076666
He said he netted close to 2k a week and my gross figures were 62k, you're the one who can't into gross versus net you retarded cunt.

>>1077079
Ahh that makes sense. Aus actually, minimum wage is like $18 or something I think. Thanks for making the thread though

>>1077121
>None of us speak german and we have no connections to make the deal ourselves.
Try just going to germany most people there would speak at least rudimentary english.

>>1077129
>Aus actually, minimum wage is like $18 or something I think.

People are shitting bricks here to bump the minimum wage to $10.10 USD (~$14 AUZ).

Had a coworker live in AUZ. Despite the increased COL, the other perks (holidays, healthcare, quality of living, and demeanor towards work), you guys deserve the 'we're number one!' foam finger.

>>1077121
hey im German. i can set you up a deal

>>1077079
Balkans?