BeekeeperOdds of Hanging On

As far as hanging onto the job you love (for beekeeping has to be one of those careers chosen out of love… it’s not the most prosperous of careers), really has to do with you. If you’re a backyard beekeeper selling to a small group of people, you can hang on as long as you like.

If you work for a big corporation—one that sells honey, beeswax, pollen, royal jelly, and even queens to sell to other farmers or even to universities that want to study bees and their products—you’ll always be at the disposal of the guy in charge.

But if you make yourself indispensable—always keeping up on what’s new in beekeeping and the business of it, being the one person to whom the bees respond the most, holding workshops with the company’s name used a lot in the presentation (not to mention the money from the workshops going to that company)—the “guy in charge” may think twice about cutting you.