Beekeeping Business Plan Template
Whether you want to start your own beekeeping business or expand an existing one, you need a business plan. The following beekeeping business plan template lets you know what elements you need to include in a successful beekeeping business plan.
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To ensure your beekeeping business success, you need a properly structured beekeeping business plan. With over 12 years of experience, we have helped over 5,000 entrepreneurs create business plans to start and grow their beekeeping businesses. Using the following beekeeping business template, you can put together an effective business plan for beekeeping business.
Things to Know Before Writing a Beekeeping Business Plan
The beekeeping industry produces honey, beeswax, propolis, pollen, bee bread, bees, bee venom, comb honey, pollination services, and other products harvested from bee colonies.
Currently, the industry GDP is $778. The industry has experienced negative growth of -0.3% in the last five years (2017-2022) and the expected growth is also negative at -0.5% for 2022-2027. The industry is in recession.
The profit number stands at $42.8 There was a 4.5% decrease in the profit for the period 2017-2022.
The profit margin is not much. It is only 5.5% which has steadily decreased in the last five years.
There are currently about 15,000 businesses involved in the beekeeping business. The industry is receiving new entrants but the rate will decrease from 7.4% to 3.6% for 2022-2027.
The industry employs only 18,127 workers. Most of these workers are self-employed or family members of small beekeeping businesses.
The industry makes most of the money by selling honey, which is 46.5% of the total revenue of the beekeeping industry; pollination services account for 38.8% and other services account for 14.7%.
The main products of the beekeeping industry are:
- Honey
- Beeswax
- Propolis
- Pollen
- bee bread
- Bees
- bee venom
- comb honey
- pollination services
Key Success Factors for the Beekeeping Business
The key success factors for the beekeeping industry are another challenge for beekeepers. Let’s take a look at it.
- Sell a Range of Products Beekeeping Industry Offers: Relying on only a source of revenue is not wise for the beekeepers. For guaranteed survival and better chances of success, the business owners will need to establish other income sources by selling other products like beeswax, royal jelly, propolis, and live bees.
- Comply with Government Regulations: The government has strict regulations about beekeeping. You will need to understand the govt regulations and comply with hive inspections.
- Maintain Quality Control: The beekeeping industry is about food. There are strict parameters. You will need to understand and maintain high-quality standards.
- Keep Business Commercially-Focused: You will have more success if you keep your focus on the commercial aspect. Also, become focused rather than being a hobbyist to be financially successful in the beekeeping business.
- Establish Cost Control : Much of the honey consumed in the USA is imported. Your business will need to be cost-effective to sell in bulk.
- Start in Friendly Climate for Bees : Your location or area for the beekeeping business is important. If the area is honey bee friendly, you will get better production.
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What is Beekeeping Business Plan?
A beekeeping business plan is a road-map for starting and growing your beekeeping business. Your business plan outlines your business concept, identifies your target customers, presents your marketing strategy, and details your financial projections.
Any bank or investor you approach will require a beekeeping business plan, so putting one together will be critical to securing funding.
In short, writing a business plan can help you succeed if you’re thinking of starting a beekeeping business or pitching to investors or venture capitalists.
Why You Need a Beekeeping Business Plan
Beekeeping business plans can be used to gain interest from potential investors or to secure loans from banks. They are also helpful to you as the owner. A beekeeping business plan allows you to thoroughly analyze every aspect of your potential business.
A solid, detailed plan gives you a clear path to follow, forces you to examine the viability of a beekeeping business idea, and may help you better understand your company’s finances and competition.
Beekeeping business owners who have a business plan grow 35% faster than those who don’t, and 75% of fast-growing businesses have one.
A beekeeping business plan is a living document that should be updated annually as your company grows and changes.
Free: Business Plan Examples
Do you need help creating a business plan? Check out these six free, proven business plan examples from different industries to help you write your own.
Sources of Honey Beekeeping Business Funding
The beekeeping industry has limited options for business funding. Some common funding sources for beekeeping businesses include personal savings, credit cards, bank loans, grants, money from friends and family, and angel investors.
You will need to have a good honey bee farming business plan when you are applying for bank loans, or institutional funding like grants, etc. You don’t have to pay back the grant but you will pay interest on loans. If you take an angel investor’s money, they may demand a share of the equity.
Since the beekeeping business is relatively cheap to start, you can take the initiative with your own savings.
You are on your own mostly in beekeeping business funding. If you are living in a rural area or on the outskirts, you may be able to get the production sooner as you can keep the bees in your backyard.
How to Write a Beekeeping Business Plan
To write a beekeeping business plan, you don’t need to be an expert. Our step-by-step guide will show you how to write a beekeeping business plan, or you can just download our proven business plan sample pdf to get a better idea.
Executive Summary
The executive summary is the most important part of the document since it outlines the whole business plan. Despite the fact that it appears first in the plan, write the executive summary last so you may condense key concepts from the other nine parts.
It’s a part that catches the investor’s eye and provides key information about your company’s overview and upcoming short- and long-term goals.
Tell them what kind of beekeeping business you have and what stage you’re in; for example, are you a startup, do you have a beekeeping agency that you want to expand, or do you have a lot of beekeeping businesses?
Finally, an executive summary should provide investors with a preview of what they may expect from the rest of your document.
- Provide a high-level overview of the beekeeping industry
- The name, location, and mission of your beekeeping business
- A description of your beekeeping business, including management, advisors, and a brief history
- Discuss the type of beekeeping business you are operating, Give an overview of your target customers., and how your company differs from competitors in the industry
- Create a marketing plan that describes your company’s marketing strategies, sales, and partnership plans.
- And give an overview of your financial plan
Check out these executive summary examples to help you write a perfect one for your beekeeping business plan.
Free: Executive Summary Examples
An executive summary is the most important part of your business plan, and it need not be challenging to write. This is why we have put together some awesome free Executive Summary examples for you.
Company Analysis
Your company overview section in a business plan will be short and clear, similar to the executive summary.
Even if they just have a few minutes, your reader has to understand what your company does and who your customers are.
The following sections will be included in your business plan’s Company Analysis:
- Company summary:
Your company analysis will describe the type of beekeeping business you are running and its future goals.
The type of beekeeping business you might be focused on: specializing in producing and selling honey. Pollination services: renting out bee hives to farmers. Selling bees: raising and selling honey bees to individuals and farmers.
- Company history: When and why did you start your honey beekeeping business?
- What milestones have you achieved so far? Among the milestones might be the number of beekeeping box or the amount of honey produced, growth year over year, etc.
- Legal structure and ownership: Do you have S-Corp status? Is it an LLC? A sole proprietorship? Describe your legal structure.
- Mission statement: An overview of your beekeeping guiding principles. Learn how to write a perfect mission statement.
Industry Analysis
Provide a brief overview of the beekeeping industry in your industry analysis. This may seem unnecessary, but it serves multiple purposes.
First, researching the beekeeping industry will educate you. It gives you an understanding of the market in which you are operating. Secondly, market research can improve your strategy, especially if it identifies market trends.
Third, market analysis shows readers you are an expert within your field. Conducting research and presenting it in your plan is the most efficient way to accomplish this.
Industry analysis can be presented as a 8-step process when written as part of a company’s business plan.
- Give a quick overview of the beekeeping industry. Define the beekeeping business in terms of size (in dollars), historical background, service region, and products.
- Examine previous trends and growth patterns in the beekeeping industry.
- Identify the market’s major competitors.
- Age, gender, and general lifestyle of the targeted market
- Determine the factors that have an impact on the beekeeping industry. These might include government regulatory rules and other businesses’ competitive activities.
- Using research data, the industry forecast expected growth over the next five to ten years. Predictions should be made for both the long and short term.
- Describe how your beekeeping business intends to position itself in the industry. Concentrate on how your beekeeping business can benefit from opportunities highlighted in the industry.
Customer Analysis
The customer analysis section is an important part of any beekeeping business plan since it evaluates the consumer segments that your company serves. It identifies target customers, determines what those customers want, and then explains how your beekeeping services will meet those requirements.
Customers can be categorized into the following segments:
- Couples Residing In Area
- Professionals Residing in Area
- Tourists
- Affluent millennials
- Serious collectors
- Baby boomers
Customer analysis may be divided into two parts: Psycho-social profiles (why your beekeeping business suits a customer’s lifestyle) and Demographic profiles (descriptions of a customer’s demographic qualities).
With regards to demographics, include information about: the ages, genders, locations, and income levels of your customers. When targeting businesses, describe what kind of business, size, and location your target customers are.
The psychological profiles of your target clients reveal their wants and needs. The better you understand and identify these demands, the better your chances of attracting and retaining customers will be.
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Competitor Analysis
It is necessary to do a competitor analysis. Because you may use their data to define your goals, marketing plans, tactics, new product lines, pricing, and more. Use competitor analysis to:
- Identify the strength and weakness of your beekeeping business competitors.
- Search for opportunities to distinguish your beekeeping business from competitors.
The first step is to determine who your direct and indirect competitors are.
The direct competitors consists of other beekeeping businesses that offer essentially the same services to the same people as you do.
Indirect competitors are other beekeeping options that people have in addition to direct competitors. The current competition in the honey bee keeping industry is high. The main competition comes from the honey imports.
Developing countries produce honey at a low cost and give the local honey production and beekeeping industry a tough competition.
Once you’ve identified the competition, concentrate on the direct, head-to-head competitors, since they are the most threatening to your beekeeping business— but keep an eye on the indirect competition as well, just in case.
Provide an overview of each direct competitor’s business and detail their strengths and weaknesses.
You will be able to position yourself competitively in the market if you perform proper competition research. Perform a SWOT Analysis to learn your competitors’ strengths, weaknesses, and competitive advantages in the following areas:
- Prices – Are they offering cheaper honey or honey-related products/services, or more costly than you and other competitors, what value do buyers get for that price?
- Quality – Are they offering premium honey and beekeeping services, the perceived worth in the eyes of the customers
- Customer service – How they respond to their consumers, whether they treat them poorly or well, and the degrees of satisfaction customers show
- Reputation — The sum of everything mentioned above: their credibility, how loved the brand is, and the loyalty of their customers
The final section of your competitive analysis should include a list of your areas of competitive advantage. for example: Are you going to offer premium honey and beekeeping products? Do you offer unique honey or beekeeping product or service that your competitors do not? Will you offer better pricing or will you offer greater customer support?
Consider how you will outperform your competitors and include them in this portion of your beekeeing business plan.
Free: SWOT Analysis Examples
Take advantage of our free SWOT analysis examples. Make your business future-proof by identifying your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats using this free SWOT Analysis Template.
Marketing Plan
Creating a marketing plan for the beekeeping business involves identifying the target demographic and finding honey products that suit their preferences.
As part of your marketing plan for a beekeeping business, you should include:
Pricing and Product Strategy
Your beekeeping business must offer honey and beekeeping products/services that are different, unique and eye catching from those of your competitors. Research what your competitors offer and how they price their honey and beekeeping services/products.
Placing and Promotions
Place refers to the location of the business where you will go the honey bee farming and where you will sell it. Describe how your location might benefit your business. As an example, are you farming honey bees in in a rural area or city outskirts, or in the woods.
Promoting your beekeeping business is the final part of your marketing plan. In this step, you document how you will drive customers to buy your services. A few marketing methods you could consider are:
- Offering free samples
- Flyers
- Social media marketing
- Get referrals from current clients
- Optimize your Google My Business listing
- Reaching out to local bloggers and websites
- List your business on industry-specific sites
You should also think about your beekeeping company’s Unique Selling Proposition (USP), which should explain why clients should choose you over other beekeeping businesses. Ensure that your USP is reflected in your marketing.
Read Later: How to create a marketing plan in a business plan.
Operations Plan
While the previous sections described your goals, your operational plan in a business plan discusses how you will achieve them.
An operations plan is helpful for investors, but it’s also helpful for you and employees because it pushes you to think about tactics and deadlines.
Your operations plan should be divided into two individual parts, as seen below.
Your daily short-term processes include all the tasks involved in running a beekeeping business, including hiring and training employees and administering the business. etc.
Your long-term goals are the milestones you hope to reach. It may include the date when you hope to lease the facility or remodel the facility: or when you hope to reach $X in revenue.
Management Team
The management team section in a business plan‘ outlines your management team, staff, resources, and how your business ownership is structured.
This part may be easily organized by dividing it into the following points:
- Ownership Structure
- Internal Management Team
- External Management Resources
- Human Resources
Ownership Structure
This section outlines your beekeeping business’s legal structure. If your company is a sole proprietorship, it may simply be one phrase. It might be longer if your company is a partnership or a corporation. You should make it a point to clarify who owns what part of the business.
Internal Management Team
This section should not only outline who is on your management team but also how each person’s skill set and experiences will contribute to the growth of your beekeeping business. Ideally, you and/or your team members have direct expertise in the beekeeping business. If this is the case, highlight your experience and skills.
External Management Resources
Think of these external management resources as your internal management team’s backup. Consider forming an advisory board if your team is lacking expertise and experience with beekeeping business.
An advisory board would consist of 3 to 7 people who would serve as mentors to your beekeeping company. They would assist in answering queries and providing strategic direction.
If necessary, search for advisory board members with expertise running beekeeping business.
Describe all of your company’s external professional advisers, such as accountants, bankers, attorneys, IT experts, business consultants, and/or business coaches.
Human Resources
The final topic to consider in the management area of your beekeeping business plan is your human resource needs.
Financial Plan
As part of your financial plan, you should present a 5-year financial statement broken down monthly or quarterly for the first year, and then annually. Financial statements include your income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement.
Income Statement
A profit and loss statement is more commonly called an income statement. It shows your revenue and subtracts your expenses to determine whether you were profitable or not.
As you develop your income statement, you need to develop assumptions. Will you serve 30 patients per day or 200? Will sales grow by 2% or 10% per year? Your choice of assumptions will greatly impact your business’s financial forecasts. Conduct as much research as possible in order to ground your assumptions in reality.
Free: Income Statement Template
Create a financial statement for your business by downloading our free income statement templates.
Balance Sheet
While balance sheets include much information, to simplify them to the key items you need to know about, balance sheets show your assets and liabilities.
The balance sheet shows your beekeeping business’s net value at a specific point in time. It categorizes all of your company’s financial data into three categories:
- Assets: Tangible goods with the monetary worth that the company owns.
- Liabilities: Debt owing to a company’s creditor.
- Equity: The net difference when the total liabilities are subtracted from the total assets.
The equation that expresses the relationship between these financial data elements is Assets = Liabilities + Equity.
Create a pro forma balance sheet for your beekeeping business plan that highlights the information in the income statement and cash flow projections. A balance sheet is normally prepared once a year by a company.
Balance sheets indicate your assets and liabilities, and while they contain a lot of information, they are simplified to highlight the most important things you need to know.
For example, spending $200,000 to build out your beekeeping business will not result in instant revenues. Rather, it is an asset that should help you earn money for many years to come.
Similarly, if a bank sends you a check for $200,000, you do not have to pay it back right now. Rather, that is a liability that you will repay over time.
Cash Flow Statement:
Your cash flow statement will help you determine how much money you need to start or grow your beekeeping business. In developing your Income Statement and Balance Sheets be sure to include several of the key costs needed in starting or growing a beekeeping business:
- Design fees, construction, and other costs associated with location development.
- Cost of equipment like display cases, computers, and software
- The cost of producing a consistent supply of honey
- Staff payroll or salaries
- The total cost of insurance coverage (general liability, workers’ compensation, and property casualty)
- Start-up inventory costs
Pro Tips: Learn how to write a financial plan in a business plan to help you write a winning beekeeping business plan.
Free: Balance Sheet Template
Create a financial statement for your business by downloading our free balance sheet templates.
Appendix
List any additional material you cannot include elsewhere, such as resumes from key employees, licenses, equipment leases, permits, patents, receipts, bank statements, contracts, and personal and business credit histories.
Attach your full financial projections along with any supporting documents that make your plan more compelling in the appendix.
Bonus Tip: Learn how to write a business plan appendix for your beekeeping business.
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Summary of the Beekeeping Business Plan
A beekeeping business plan is a worthwhile investment. As long as you follow the template above, you will become an expert in no time. By following the template, you will understand the beekeeping business, your competition, and your customers. The plan will help you understand the steps necessary to launch and grow your beekeeping business.
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Since 2010, Wise business plans’ MBA professional business plan writers has developed business plans for thousands of companies that have experienced tremendous success.
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