Unironically what is the process to becoming a beekeeper/ welder and how much does each profession make

buddy of mine has 40+ wooded acres in Northeast Ohio. What to farm or do on it for this new depression going on? ginsing was a long term play i thought of. cant be too out in the open on what we are farming and doing because its near a shitty rural town.

you either have 2-3 dozen hives and sell artisanal honey in pretty bottles to yoga moms at farmers markets as a side gig, or you have 2-3 thousand hives and work like a dog to try to keep your head above water as a commercial beekeeper. some people make a full time thing out of local artisanal honey, but I don't think they make a very good living desu.

I kept bees as a hobbyist for about 10 years, it's great as a backyard project but I can't even imagine trying to make money from it. if I were to give it a go though, I'd try to build a local mead brand. few dozen hives, elegant mead flavors like lavender lemon mead or something. that's what I was doing with my honey, but it was only for personal use /friends and family

>underwater welding cert
>400k starting

i heard it's all propaganda, the american welding society, wants young ppl to think we are in dire need of welders. then when they have millions of welders, they can get paid like $15/hr

its also one of the most dangerous occupations in the world

the thing about bees is that as a business, it doesn't scale well. there's a limit to how many healthy hives you can keep on a piece of land because they are all using the same surrounding resources. so commercial beeks have a number of bee yards and still end up feeding a shit load of sugar to their bees, which weakens their immune systems and causes a whole slew of new issues.
the world needs more backyard beekeepers, and less commercial operations.

This would be a dream job desu
Any recommendations for books or websites?
I've started to make mead.
First one wasn't bad with a WLP007 yeast.

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Hello newfriend

>delta p
>die 3 months in
Local mead from local honey sounds based af

smalltime beekeeping is comfy but it won't make you jack shit. It's oftentimes unprofitable to even harvest and sell the honey unless you can carve out a niche at a farmer's market where you can sell for $10/lb.

Bigtime beekeeping is all about selling pollination services to california orchards in the springtime. It's not comfy at all, it's more like being a freight coordinator than anything because you have to figure out how to ship thousands of colonies across the country to CA, space them out just right in fields, hire security to deter thieves (hive theft is a huge thing), figure out how to get them all back home afterward. All while battling colony collapse and other pest/herbicide related diseases. Most beekeepers have to replace something like 50%+ of their hives every year because die-off is so severe right now.

Most bigtime beekeers don't harvest honey at all. All their money is from pollination.

t. ag stat

just weld up some bee cages. you'll be rolling in honey in no time!

I thought beesource was a good forum when I was learning. idk, there's a lot you can read and it really depends on what kind of beekeeper you want to be desu....there's quite a split between conventional vs. natural methods but you can find plenty of literature on either style you choose.
my starting advice is always have at least two hives. with two hives you can pull resources from one to the other if need be (if a queen dies or something you can pull brood for the other to raise a new queen.)
it's early enough in the year where you can still get set up for 2020 if you're into it.

Welding is a huge field and the pay scale reflects that. It's hard work and is physically abusive. To make any money you have to be certified for the type of welding you will do. Also certifications expire so you have to stay on top of the game.

Thanks!
I'll keep that in mind but I was more talking about mead making.
I sadly don't have the space yet for beekeeping

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ah, well idk then. I always just threw it together and would add things that sounded good to me at the time. mead making can be a science, but it wasn't for me. honey, yeast, water....our ancestors have been making this shit in clay pots going back thousands of years. hard to fuck it up imo.

also, if you really want to make money from agriculture, become a dairy gangster. These 10000 head megadairy fuckers have their hands in all the subsidy pies thanks to decades of intensive lobbying. It is unbelievable how many gibs they've managed to sign themselves up for, and doubly unbelievable how many of those gibs they don't pass along to the consumer. They just pocket and profit.

Like everything with ag though, go big or go home. 20-head mom and pop dairies are all going under because they don't have access to the same subsidies.

How do you weld bees together?

Ok thanks anyways!

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Allrighty lets talk start up costs.

A beehive plus swarm is about 300-400 bucks.
thats 2 langstroth hive boxes plus top, bottom, and frames. Plus a swarm with a fertile queen.

On average, a bee hive can make you round 200 bucks a year.

You rent it out to the local raspberry farmers?
100 Bucks for the flowering period.
Look at the crops grown in your local area, buckwheat, berries, fruit, vegetables whatever.
The more flowering periods that you can fin that don't overlap the more you can get out of renting your hives for pollination services.

One full medium frame of honey has about 20 bucks of wholesale honey in it.
If you can get 10 frames out of a hive in a year, thats 200 bucks.

You can also target the health fools.
Raw Honey comb in limited batches sells for 5 times what they honey does.
Use the "Ross rounds" system for the professional health food look.
8 Ross rounds per frame for 8 bucks whole sale per frame is 64 bucks a frame.
10 frames = 640$$$ per hive.

Fair warning, you ain't getting anything cash-wise out of them your first year.
30% will die every year. 80% if you are untrained or inexperienced.

Later bud.

It depends. I make $50/hr as a pipefitter/welder out of Chicago.

aaah yes this
a fucking calssic in wqestern europe
"shortage of skilled workers"
ooooh we HAVE TO import people from cheap countries
oooooh we can pay them way lower
what? the local people refuse to work for that low wage?
oooooh we have a shortage of skilled people

and so on .....

Ya welders on all the industrial jobs Ive worked in Northern Canada were making $50-$55/hr (CAD obv, but thats still around $40USD, and everyone on those jobs gets around a 13% bonus every 3 months). These were jobs in a wide variety of sectors and industries as well.

lol you do realize every single steel framed structure (and pretty much every wood framed one as well) requires welders, right? Its not just working in a mechanic shop or laying pipelines