If you sell honey at all, where does the first jar usually go: neighbors, a farmers market, a feed store, online, or somewhere else? I started in 2017 with 10 hives around Burleson, Texas. Early sales were mostly people who already knew us. The channel came later. Reply with your main channel and about what you get for a pint or a pound. If you have not sold any yet, say who you would ask first. Answer each other if you can. @Jim Flach @Justin McAdams @Paula Carnell , where did your first jar go?

Welcome to Day 1 of the 7 Day Sideliner Starter Challenge. By Sunday you will have a one-page plan for your next 12 months. The path has three stages. In Backyard the job is keeping bees alive. In Sideliner the job is selling more than one thing. In Commercial the job is running a business. I started in 2017 with 10 hives and now run 900-plus colonies, and every stage matters because a dead hive earns nothing. Task for today: write four numbers. How many hives you have right now (zero is fine), how much you have spent on bees so far, how much you have earned from bees so far, and the one thing you would like bees to pay for. Reply with your four numbers and your stage. If you are not sure which stage you are in, say so and I will place you. @Justin McAdams @Paula Carnell @Jennifer Rochlin which stage would you put yourselves in right now?

Day 2. Today we put real prices on the start. Task: find the current local price of three things. A bee jacket or suit with veil. A hive tool and a smoker. Bees: a package or nuc from two local sources. For comparison, our 2027 5-frame Ten Box nuc is $275 now that the $250 presale ended Nov 1, and it is picked up in Burleson. Add it up. For reference, Extension budgets for the first hive run about $800 to $1,100 with new equipment, and a swarm costs nothing but is not guaranteed. Reply with your three prices and your total. Prices differ by area, so post yours even if they look high or low. @Gus Lutjens @Xander Du Preez @Tommy Gan what did bees cost you to get started, roughly?

Day 4. Today you build a start budget, and you can do it for any amount. Task: list every item you need to start, the price, and where you would buy it. Mark each one new or used. If you have about $200, here is what that realistically buys: a jacket, hive tool, smoker, two used deep boxes with clean frames, a bottom board, a lid and a swarm lure. It does not buy bees or a full new hive. A swarm is free but may not come, so plan the cost of a nuc or package as your backup. Reply with your total and one item you can build, borrow or buy used to lower it. @Gus Lutjens @Xander Du Preez @Tommy Gan if you were starting over with about $200, what would you buy first, and what would you leave for later?

A queen is the bottleneck in almost every growth plan. You need one for every split, every nuc, and every hive that goes queenless. The question is whether to buy them or raise them yourself. What we charge: Cordovan/Italian queens are $65 regular, $50 on sale. Pickup at the farm in Burleson after mid-April. We do not ship queens. Buying makes sense when: 1. You run a handful of hives and only need a few queens a year. Grafting gear and mating nucs cost more than those queens, and the time you spend learning is time you are not selling honey or watching mites. 2. You need a reliable laying queen on a date. A bought queen is already mated. A cell you raise still has to mate, and weather can wipe a whole batch. 3. You are building nucs for sale and cannot risk a high fail rate on the queens that head them. Raising your own starts to pencil out when you need dozens of queens in a season, not three. Rough cost lines to work through (these are my estimates; price your own suppliers): 1. Grafting tools, cell cups, and a grafting frame. Estimate: under $100 to start small. 2. Mating nucs. You need several small boxes and frames just for mating. Estimate: a few hundred dollars once you get serious. 3. Breeder stock. You either buy a good queen to graft from or keep your best layers. That is a real cost either way. 4. Failures. A share of cells will not take, and a share of virgin queens will not mate. Spread that loss over the queens that do. 5. Your time. Grafting, checking cells, setting mating nucs, and hunting for laying queens. Add those up, divide by the queens you actually get, and compare that number to $50 or $65. If you only need five queens, buying usually wins. If you need fifty for nucs and requeens, raising can pay, but only after you have the skill and the mating yard working. One more angle: even commercial outfits buy queens sometimes. We raise queens and we also sell them. Scale does not mean you never write a check. It means you pick the path that keeps hives productive and customers supplied.