Apiary: 38 kg a hive earns less than 24

“I used to close the season with one number — how many kilograms of honey the apiary equals. The best site, I thought, was the one that gave 38 kg a hive. Then I worked out the margin: the site with 24 kilograms brings more” — that is how Petro Savchuk, owner of an apiary in the Chernihiv region, opened the conversation.

The picture is familiar. The hives stand, the honey harvest comes in, the buyer takes the whole volume. The season is closed in kilograms, and the figure grows every year.

The calculation breaks in one place. The apiary works for kilograms and sells a grade. Sunflower and acacia honey differ in price almost twofold.

Below, the apiary is broken down into three sites and one hive. And you can see why 38 kg bring less money than 24.

Both units already exist at the apiary. The beekeeper knows the harvest, the buyer knows the price of the grade. Neither one stands in the books.

Petro's road: three sites

Petro started with two dozen hives on his home plot. He sold the honey to neighbours and at the market. He kept the economics in his head, and that really was enough.

Then came the capital spending. A migration platform, a honey extractor, containers, wax foundation for the whole apiary, a wintering shed. The hive count reached 420.

The habit of measuring the season in kilograms stayed from the days of a single site. Back then kilograms were the answer to any question.

The three sites appeared by forage, not by plan. First came the standing place on wildflower beside the forest. Then an agreement with a farmer about rapeseed. Then the old acacia grove beyond the village.

“While there was one site, I knew it to the cent. For the third standing place I was already signing the agreement with the farmer holding one seasonal total for the whole apiary. Where exactly the apiary earned, I did not know then.”

The limit of gross harvest

Petro's books are tidy. The season closed at 11 520 kg of honey. Revenue — 1 250 560 ₴.

Profit — 275 760 ₴, that is 22.1% of revenue. For an apiary of this size it is a working result.

There is no mistake in these figures. There is a limit in them: they are totals. A total is true and tells you nothing.

The gross harvest does not know which site the honey came from. And it does not know the price that honey went for.

While the apiary stood on one standing place, kilograms answered everything. The sites became three — and one number stopped being an answer.

The gross harvest makes no decisions.

What the season report showed

The accounting the apiary lived with for these years is familiar to any farm grown out of a single standing place.

• Honey was counted in kilograms. The grade stood nowhere — neither in the beekeeper's notebook nor in the season total.
• The sites were not separated. Honey from three standing places went into one volume and sold as one lot at an average price.
• Migration was written off as transport. Fuel and platform rent went into a general line, and that money never reached the hive.
• Winter losses counted as weather. They were not a cost line, so nobody asked what they cost.
• The colony had no money value. The split was made by hand, so it was treated as free.
• The plan came from the hive count. So many hives, so many expected kilograms, and the grade was pulled in later.

There is not a word here about bees or about weather. Six points, and every one of them accounting. That is why neither the beekeeper nor Petro himself saw them.

Accounting mistakes are invisible at the site and in the bank statement. They show up only when one number is broken into three.

The site's hive, not the apiary's

A hive at the apiary is not one unit but three. The keeping cost is the same everywhere: 740 ₴ a season.

The unit is easy to confuse here. An apiary is measured in hives, and it earns on a kilogram of a certain grade. What has to be counted is the hive of a certain site.

Everything else differs. Harvest per hive, price per kilogram, migration and winter losses — all four lines are its own at every standing place.

740 ₴ of base cost per hive

This sum does not depend on the site. Feed — 340 ₴. Veterinary medicines — 180 ₴. Wax foundation and frames — 220 ₴.

It is paid for every hive, whether it gives 38 kg or 16. That is exactly why it does not move the ranking of the sites.

The ranking is made by other lines: the price of the grade, migration and wintering. All three are manageable, and all three used to sit in the common pot.

Margin is counted per hive, not per apiary.

Grade outweighs the harvest

The first half of the calculation is not about bees but about price. The apiary sells a grade, not honey. Which grade it will be is decided by the forage.

Sunflower honey the buyer takes at 82 ₴ a kilogram. Acacia — at 150 ₴. Forest honey and wildflower — at 110 ₴.

The difference is not in the quality of the beekeeper's work. Sunflower gives a lot of honey, and cheap. Acacia gives little, and dear.

They cannot be swapped. The forage either blooms within flight range or it does not.

82, 150 and 110 are the price per kilogram

These three numbers are hryvnias per kilogram, not the harvest. 82 ₴ is sunflower at site A. 150 ₴ is acacia at site B.

110 ₴ is forest honey and wildflower at site C. The same price appears once more below, in the third scenario.

“I negotiated with the buyer for the whole lot: so many tonnes, such a price. Then I started bargaining for the acacia separately. The price per kilogram went up almost twofold against sunflower. Before that I was handing over the dear grade at the average price.”

The honey grade outweighs the harvest.

Where the apiary's margin hides

Now the same thing in a table. The base cost is identical in every row. The difference is made by four columns on the right.

Site A gives 1 718 ₴ of margin per hive. Site B — 2 428 ₴. Site C — 804 ₴.

Then comes simple multiplication. The 160 hives of site A give 274 880 ₴. The same 160 hives of site B — 388 480 ₴.

Yes, 160 stands in the table twice. The first two sites hold the same number of hives, and it is not a typo in the row.

Site C with a hundred hives adds 80 400 ₴. Together the three standing places give 743 760 ₴ of contribution a season.

None of these numbers is new. They all came out of the same season that used to close with a single sum.

Two rankings that disagree

Let us take two columns from the table and build the ranking twice. First by kilograms, then by money.

By harvest per hive site A leads, then B, and C is last. By margin per hive site B leads, then A, and C is last.

The first two places have swapped. Site A moves its bees twice a season, takes the biggest harvest and still stays second.

The last place has not changed. Site C stands behind in kilograms and in money alike, so it raises no questions.

38, 24 and 16 are kilograms

These three numbers are the harvest from one hive for the season. Not percentages, not hryvnias and not a count of frames.

Next to them in the table stand 82, 150 and 110. That is the price per kilogram.

The order in the two series is the opposite. The biggest harvest stands against the cheapest price, the smallest against the dearest. That is the whole article.

Kilograms and hryvnias are different series

The margin per hive in the table is 1 718 ₴, 2 428 ₴ and 804 ₴. That is money for the whole season, not for a month.

The site with the biggest harvest gives 1 718 ₴. The site with the smallest — 804 ₴. And the most, 2 428 ₴, comes from the middle one by kilograms.

The arithmetic is plain: 24 kg at 150 ₴ is more than 38 kg at 82 ₴. On this difference rests the decision where to put the hives.

The ranking in kilograms is not wrong. It simply answers another question: where the beekeeper worked the hardest.

Kilograms measure work, money measures decisions.

Migration as an investment

Site A is the only one that travels. In spring the bees stand on rapeseed, in midsummer they are moved to sunflower.

Every trip costs 185 ₴ a hive. That is the platform, the fuel, the loading work and the stand in the field. For the season it comes to 370 ₴.

In the report it was a line called “transport”. It looked like the cost worth cutting first.

In fact it is exactly these 370 ₴ that give site A its 38 kg a hive. Without migration the harvest falls, and the grade turns cheaper.

370 ₴ of migration means two trips

One move costs 185 ₴ a hive. There are two of them a season, so the table shows 370 ₴.

The other two sites do not move bees, and their figure in this column is zero. The acacia grove and the forest stay put.

Because of this, migration looked like a drawback of site A. In money it turned out to be its main advantage.

Migration is not a cost, it is harvest paid for.

“For two years I tried to beat down the transport invoice for the migration. Then I worked out what those 370 ₴ a hive bring in. I was bargaining over the wrong line. The deal to make was with the farmer about the standing place on rapeseed, not with the carrier about the rate.”

The price of one bad wintering

The second half of the calculation is about winter. A colony costs 2 400 ₴. That is the price at which it can be bought or sold.

Winter losses are the share of colonies that did not live to spring. At site A it is 12%, and in money 288 ₴ for every hive.

Two numbers mean the same thing in different units. Multiply the percentage by the price of a colony and you get hryvnias per hive.

This money rarely passes through a statement. The colony is restored with a split, by hand, without any invoice.

The cost does not disappear because of that. The split takes frames and brood from a strong colony, and that colony gives less marketable honey.

“One bad wintering cost me more than all the wax foundation of the season. Back then I did not count a colony in money — it was simply „so many dropped out“. Once I put 2 400 ₴ against every percent, the wintering shed stopped looking like a whim.”

Winter losses are colonies at 2 400 ₴ each.

Winter losses in the calculation

Let us put the losses of the three sites into one table. The columns run from the percentage to hryvnias for the whole standing place.

The worst wintering is at site B. There it is 18% against 9% at site C, that is twice as much.

And it is the same site B that gives the biggest margin per hive. Two indicators stand in one row and are not tied to each other.

The reason lies in the forage, not in the accounting. Acacia finishes blooming early. After that the site stands without a supporting flow, and the colonies go into winter weaker.

For the whole standing place 18% give 69 120 ₴. It is the largest loss line at the apiary, and it never came as an invoice.

At site A the losses take 46 080 ₴, at site C — 21 600 ₴. The gap between the standing places here is more than threefold.

The most profitable site can have the worst losses.

The season in total

To put the contribution of the sites in its place, let us lay it into the season report. Revenue — 1 250 560 ₴. The contribution of the three standing places — 743 760 ₴.

Against it stand the fixed costs. They do not know which site the honey came from.

• Wages — 240 000 ₴. Seasonal beekeepers and helpers at the extraction.
• Transport and fuel — 86 000 ₴. Trips around the sites, feed delivery, honey haulage.
• Depreciation of equipment — 64 000 ₴. The extractor, containers, the platform, the wintering shed.
• Site rent — 36 000 ₴. Payments to landowners for the standing places.
• Administration — 42 000 ₴. Bookkeeping, documents, veterinary certificates.

Together that is 468 000 ₴ a season. Profit — 275 760 ₴, that is 22.1% of revenue.

These costs barely react to the harvest. Wages, rent and depreciation are paid the same — whether it is 11 520 kg or less.

So every hive standing on a cheap grade hits the profit itself. It carries the same fixed costs and brings in less.

Where this sum does not belong

The first reaction to winter losses is always the same: add them as a separate cost line. That must not be done.

They are already inside. 288 ₴, 432 ₴ and 216 ₴ are already subtracted in the margin per hive at each site.

Subtracting them again means counting the same loss twice. Profit on paper will fall, though nothing has happened.

There is a second trap as well. Nobody paid this money to anyone, because there is no invoice for a colony.

The cost does not become zero because of that. It arrives the next season — as a weak colony and as kilograms of marketable honey never collected.

The right place for these numbers is not a separate line in the report. Their place is the conversation about wintering at the end of August.

There they work as a target, not as a hole. The target is plain: bring the percentage down at the site with the worst wintering.

Three moves and their price

Petro made the decision through three scenarios. He calculated each one and laid them into one table.

The first move is about grade, not about harvest. A hive carried to acacia gives fewer kilograms and more money.

The second is about winter. A wintering shed, proper feed and timely treatment bring the losses of site B down to the level of site C.

Neither move calls for new hives. The apiary is the same, the bees are the same, the forage is the same.

The third move stands in the table not to be carried out. It stands there to show the price of migration.

80 hives and 82 ₴ are different numbers

Two similar numbers have ended up side by side, and they are easy to merge. 80 is how many hives move from site A to acacia.

82 ₴ is the price of a sunflower kilogram. The first number is hives, the second is hryvnias per kilogram.

The margin gap in this move is 1 718 ₴ against 2 428 ₴ per hive. On 80 hives that is +56 800 ₴ a season.

The move runs up against something other than arithmetic. The acacia grove holds a limited number of hives, and 80 is already its ceiling.

110 ₴ appears twice

The article shows 110 ₴ a kilogram twice, and these are not two different prices. The first is forest honey and wildflower at site C.

The second is that same wildflower grade in the third scenario. One grade, so one price.

Next to it in the same row stands 22. These are kilograms per hive without migration, not a percentage. Profit in revenue is 22.1%, and that is another number.

The third move gives −52 160 ₴, worse than the current state. “Stop moving the bees” sounds like a saving, yet migration pays for itself.

A scenario is judged by feasibility, not by the sum.

“I wanted to move half of site A to acacia. I drove out, looked at the grove and counted the standing spots. It will not take more than 80 hives. The rest of the line I struck from the plan, because the forage base does not negotiate.”

The first two moves together lift the profit from 275 760 ₴ to 367 120 ₴. That is by 1.33 times, and without a single new hive.

What the owner decided

Petro took the first two moves and struck the third from the plan. He put the decision into three changes in the accounting.

• Every site became a separate row. Harvest, grade, price, migration and losses — across three standing places, not as one sum.
• Honey stopped going into one volume. The acacia is extracted and sold apart, at its own price of 150 ₴ a kilogram.
• The colony received a price. 2 400 ₴ in the report, and winter losses now read as 288 ₴, 432 ₴ and 216 ₴ a hive.

Neither new hives nor a new standing place were needed for this. What was needed was to see the grade and the wintering as lines in the margin.

The decision cost money. The wintering shed at site B, better feed and autumn treatment ate part of the season's profit.

Petro gave up the fourth site this year. The money went into wintering, not into a bigger apiary.

He gave up the habit of selling honey as one lot as well. The acacia is kept apart now, and the talks run by grade.

Every season Petro looks at one indicator: margin per hive at each site. The gross harvest stayed in the notebook, but decisions are not made by it.

The seasonal measure: margin per hive by site.

A conclusion for business owners. If your product comes in grades with different prices, gross volume decides nothing. Count the margin per unit separately for every source. Put beside it the costs that this source demands: the move, the rent, the losses. Then look at the ranking that comes out in money rather than in kilograms. The same works for any farm with mixed-grade output: an orchard, a vineyard, a greenhouse, a fish farm.

Closing advice

• Count the margin per hive at every site. 1 718 ₴, 2 428 ₴ and 804 ₴ are three different economies, not a rounding error.
• Put the grade into the document. While the notebook holds only kilograms, no report will rank the standing places in money.
• Do not confuse harvest with price. 38 kg at 82 ₴ give less than 24 kg at 150 ₴.
• Tie the migration to the hive. 185 ₴ a trip and 370 ₴ a season belong to a certain site, not to general transport.
• Give the colony a price. 2 400 ₴ turn 12% and 18% into 288 ₴ and 432 ₴ a hive.
• Check the wintering of the most profitable site. At site B 18% of losses eat 69 120 ₴ a season.
• Do not judge a scenario by the sum. Moving 80 hives pays, but the acacia grove has a ceiling.

Money does not vanish — you just do not see it

People think two things decide everything at an apiary. The strength of the colonies and the weather on the main flow. Without them there really is no season.

But the earnings are decided by a third thing. Which grade stands under the hive, and how many hryvnias a kilogram of that grade equals.

The gross total will not show this. It sums up the apiary, while the decision lives at one standing place.

It can be seen only in the breakdown. A hive on acacia and a hive on sunflower are two different economies with identical care.

As soon as grade and wintering become lines, the main thing shows. These 22.1% of profit belong neither to site B nor to site C.

It is the average between a hive that brings 2 428 ₴ and a hive that brings 804 ₴.

Count this across your own sites. One column in the report — and the apiary stops being a single number.

How to see this at your own apiary

Everything above rests on one table: not the season in kilos, but each site as a row, with the harvest, the price of the grade, the migration cost and the winter losses side by side. As long as the result is measured in gross honey, you see neither that the biggest harvest brings the smallest money, nor that winter losses are colonies worth 2 400 ₴ each. When the same data is collected automatically, the margin per hive at each site becomes visible — which is exactly why owners of small and medium businesses use Finmap: to see the financial picture rather than gather it from fragments.

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Topic foundation: Management Accounting Explained: What It Is and Why Owners Need It