Beekeepers Build Buzzing Backyard Business

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

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In today's buzzworthy story, a couple living in Australia goes into the bee business. They learn the basics by watching YouTube and then volunteering in their community. Once they transition from hobby to income, it becomes something much more than they ever imagined. How much money can you make caring for bees? Well, in the second half of 2018, this business brought in more than $100,000.

Welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. In this episode, you'll also learn what a swarm list is, just in case a group of bees decides to move onto your property. Or alternatively, if you're interested in trying your hand at beekeeping yourself. So stay tuned for Beekeepers Build Buzzing Backyard Business.

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For Ana and Sven Martin, side hustling has become a way of life. Originally from Spain and Germany, respectively, the couple now lives in Australia. They've had a never ending run of side jobs to bolster their income. They flipped houses, renovated apartments, and hosted local cultural nights, just to name a few. But like so many other stories we've heard, the side hustle that truly captured their hearts and felt like it gave them a real purpose originally started off as a hobby.

It began when Ana and Sven stumbled across a Kickstarter campaign for a product called FlowHive. The campaign highlighted the growing problems honeybees were having all over the world. It gave practical solutions to help people do their part. Sven saw this as his chance to make a difference in an important global issue. They invested $500 in some boxes to keep bees in the garden of their new family farm.

Sven also joined the local beekeeper association, that's the thing, and put himself on what's known as a swarm list. A list of people who are willing to come and remove bee swarms, which have settled in unwanted places. Now get this, although it sounds like a job that needs rigorous training, Sven learned most of what he needed to know by watching YouTube videos when he couldn't sleep. Within a few days of joining that list, phone calls began coming in. People all over the area found themselves with bees that had settled in the most inconvenient spots, schoolyards, house walls, and telephone interchanges, where they can cause real problems.

Many beekeepers find these locations too tricky to work from, so they opt to exterminate the swarms instead. But Sven relished the challenge, the tougher the better. Rescue the bees. Every colony of bees Sven rescued was relocated to a box on his farm, so he and Anna could care for them. Within four months, they had 35 rescued hives of bees.

Better still, these hives were creating honey, which Anna and Sven then harvested to eat and share with their friends. As the months went on, this hobby began to require more and more of their time, so much so in fact, they found it hard to balance their real jobs, Anna and hospitality and Sven as a kitchen fitter. So they began looking at how they could consolidate their time and turn their passion project into a paying one. They decided they would try packaging and selling the honey they'd harvested at local farmer's markets. Anna did some research to find markets with available stalls.

She then registered to sell their product, which they called Amber Drop Honey. Their presentation was basic, but using their unique story and sharing the plight of the bees, they were able to sell $600 worth of honey and become the buzz of the market. Proud of what they'd achieved in that test run, Anna and Sven moved forward. They booked stalls at a few more markets to see if they could repeat their success, and they did. Anna also felt it was important to take Amber Drop Honey online.

So while Sven was tending to the bees, she taught herself how to create and host a WordPress website using tutorials, more YouTube videos, and information she found on forums. The only money she invested was in a theme and the initial hosting, so less than $50. As the business gained a following and more and more colonies of bees, the operational costs began to mount. Their farm currently has close to 200 hives, all of which live in their own beekeeping box, which run at a cost of $180 per unit. Now, these costs are negated by the fact that Sven gets the bees for free.

That's part of the deal. He's on the swarm list. He rescues the bees, gets to keep them, but still, there are real expenses. They have to factor them into their products end costs, which currently starts at around $12 per jar. As they've learned more about it, one of the most profitable income streams has been selling their product wholesale, which now accounts for around 45% of their income.

They achieved this by focusing on standalone retailers, not big supermarkets, more like independent and wellness stores. The major advantage of wholesale is that they can focus on product creation and the back end of their business, and therefore reduce the number of markets they attend each month. In the second half of 2018, Amber Drop Honey generated $110,000 in revenue, a force to be reckoned with. Much of that money goes back into the business, but they now pay themselves enough of a salary to support their growing family. There are sweet stacks of cash in that swarm.

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All right, as we have heard in a couple of previous episodes, there's Money and the Bees, episode 104, Show Me the Honey, Houston Beekeeper Buzzes to $4,000 a month, episode 328, Environmentalist Couple sells online courses in beekeeping, and episode 597, Six Figure Beekeeping Biz, Buzzes for Minnesota Couple. So for anyone interested in learning more about the bee biz, go and check out those stories as well. You can always access each story by episode number on the sidehustleschool.com website. So again, that was episode 104, 328, and 597. Listeners, I hope you enjoyed this one.

I hope I'm not the only person out there who did not know what a swarm list was, but now I do. So perhaps you and me are educated on that point. And to check out the show notes for this whole episode, go to sidehustleschool.com/763. Thanks so much for listening. I'll be buzzing back again tomorrow with a weekly recap.

My name is Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School. [Music]