Another young apprentice

[Bumble]

Have you ever looked at the financials for these " family businesses "

Turnover isn't the same as income. Many a 'family business' exists, and keeps ticking over, only because family members are willing to work longer hours and for significantly less of a 'wage' than an employee who has no emotional link to the business.

So far its been great advertising for Rowse and a few of its suppliers.

Why shouldn't companies that sponsor apprenticeships benefit from advertising, or is there some reason why you think anything related to beekeeping should be treated differently from any other commercial contract or commercial sponsorship - football, for example?

There's not much point in advertising it when any school leaver who enquires with the careers service will be told it doesn't exist.

The National Careers Service has a very good description of the job of 'Beekeeper' including links to the LANTRA scheme and BFA.
https://nationalcareersservice.direc...beekeeper.aspx

Can someone tell me what the wage structure will be for anyone not owning the company on completion ?
Some of you must have employees, what's is the annual salary you pay( and does it justify a 3yr apprenticeship) ?

Apprentices tend to be paid NMW. On completion of the apprenticeship they either stay with the company, seek employment elsewhere, or try to set up their own business. Why should beekeeping be any different?

[SDM]

So what is the salary for a newly qualified apprentice ? Surely it's not a hard question to answer.
There's no mention of the apprenticeship in the careers service link. The BFA gets mentioned at the bottom of the page under" other info".

[alclosier]

So what is the salary for a newly qualified apprentice ? Surely it's not a hard question to answer

Actually I suspect it is. It depends on who they work for, what their contract is, are they self employed or not...

[SDM]

Self employed in Beekeeping after 3 yrs of minimum wage, I'd love to see that done. Any that could have achieved it would I presume be bust this year. I certainly can't see any bank covering setup costs and anything up to 3 yrs salary too.
So far it seems that a 3 year apprenticeship on minimum wage will lead to being seasonally employed on ......minimum wage. Unless of course your dad owns the business. That doesn't sound too appealing.
Do any of the commercial beekeepers here employ staff all year round ? What is their salary ?
I'd love to be enthusiastic about this scheme and I don't see this as picking holes, I'm just pointing out the gaping wounds .

[Calluna4u]

Self employed in Beekeeping after 3 yrs of minimum wage, I'd love to see that done. Any that could have achieved it would I presume be bust this year. I certainly can't see any bank covering setup costs and anything up to 3 yrs salary too.
So far it seems that a 3 year apprenticeship on minimum wage will lead to being seasonally employed on ......minimum wage. Unless of course your dad owns the business. That doesn't sound too appealing.
Do any of the commercial beekeepers here employ staff all year round ? What is their salary ?
I'd love to be enthusiastic about this scheme and I don't see this as picking holes, I'm just pointing out the gaping wounds .

I have 5 year round staff. I do not use apprentices, training my own people our own way to keep bees the way we want it done. They start unskilled and progress through from gopher to beekeeper to team leader. I am not going to reveal their wages on open media, but its above NMW, even for the gopher. They get more at busy times, less in winter. The two top people end up with a gross wage in the vicinity of 20K, but do a lot of hours for that. You cannot state their salary as it all depends on how many hours they work and how much holiday they choose to take, and every one of my staff is different. This year the whole crop will barely cover their wages, and as with almost all family businesses, the family come last in the queue.

You focus very heavily on the salary and what its worth, and we have a somewhat cyclical feel to this discussion. Some people choose their work for entirely mercenary reasons, seeking standard of living. If that was me I would never have left the sea and been high up in some shipping company by now, which role I was being groomed for in my late 20's. Some however, make an equally valid, yet less valued by outsiders, choice to go for quality of life. This was me. I earn well south of a third of what I would have done if I stayed in shipping, yet no way would I swap it. When I reach my ancient decrepitude (contrary to commonly held opinion I am not there YET) I want to be able to say I enjoyed my life, not that I sold my life.

If your main consideration of bee farming as a profession is based on a cold calculation of how much money you will make then forget it before you start. This is, as pointed out by others, a profession chosen because its what you want to do, and, in common with amateur beekeepers (the distinction is pretty blurred anyway) the primary reason we do what we do is because we love doing it. Sometimes hard to recall this autumn while attempting to extract your van from a swamp that was not there a few weeks earlier, removing hives from heather sites that have yielded zip all, and you get caked in mud just for the pleasure.....

The apprenticeship scheme is NOT about simply producing a supply of cheap labour for bee farmers or a subsidised cushy number for their families. It is a training scheme that is intended to develop ALL aspects of what it takes to run a bee farming business, and the curriculum is actually quite impressive. Once you have completed it you have the tools necessary to go on and run your own enterprise, though in many case I doubt the experience of the hands on stuff is adequate at that stage unless from a previous bee related background. My best two people came here with zero bee experience whatsoever.

OK, I don't use the scheme and probably never will, but please don't knock it, it is very sound and progressive, and also a work in progress, as it will change in response to the needs going forward.

[chris]

[QUOTE=Calluna4u;32384] I want to be able to say I enjoyed my life, not that I sold my life.
QUOTE]

Bravo!!!

[alclosier]

Well said.

[SDM]

Thanks C4U that answers the questions that are currently missing from the BFA information on the scheme. I'm honestly surprised at the wage rates you pay as I didn't expect there to be a sufficient margin in UK Beekeeping to cover it(I certainly don't envy you paying it this year, but hey, that's business). I'll make a guess and say you had 20 years of a well above average salary before you could afford to select your career as a lifestyle choice, its hardly fair to expect the same of a 16 yr old apprentice. My complaint all along has been the complete absence of a post apprenticeship career structure or a guideline finishing salary, made all the more suspicious by the rather incestuous selection of apprentices.
I hardly fit the category of money grabber when it comes to Beekeeping, having walked away from a branch of the same industry as you( but one with frankly obscene wages, with many captains earning in excess of 1 million a year tax free)

[Calluna4u]

Thanks C4U that answers the questions that are currently missing from the BFA information on the scheme. I'm honestly surprised at the wage rates you pay as I didn't expect there to be a sufficient margin in UK Beekeeping to cover it(I certainly don't envy you paying it this year, but hey, that's business). I'll make a guess and say you had 20 years of a well above average salary before you could afford to select your career as a lifestyle choice, its hardly fair to expect the same of a 16 yr old apprentice. My complaint all along has been the complete absence of a post apprenticeship career structure or a guideline finishing salary, made all the more suspicious by the rather incestuous selection of apprentices.
I hardly fit the category of money grabber when it comes to Beekeeping, having walked away from a branch of the same industry as you( but one with frankly obscene wages, with many captains earning in excess of 1 million a year tax free)

My family background made this the job of choice. My father started in bees in 1950, and over a period of 20 years built up to the point where he quit the day job and went full time in 1970.

I started going out with him when I was only 8, moving supers one at a time in a little barrow. I could not wait for the chance to go out with him and loved it far more than ever I loved school. I picked raspberries in the summer on a nearby farm for money of my own and one year the whole lot went into buying my first hives from outwith the family unit. I was 13 at the time. So I come from a background where bees were in the family and the attitude required to work with the bees was ingrained from my earliest years, even sleeping in my pram outside my fathers little shed at the time while my mother extracted the honey inside in the summer of 1955, which was a big year.

Many of those who go on to be big in bees are the product of a start in the trade as children with their parents. They then build on what they take over.

I came home from sea quite early, as a consequence of three factors running together. My father was becoming to unfit to continue to run both a 400 hive unit and do all the packing selling delivering etc etc, and bringing up his family on his own (mother had died youngish), and having run the bees one summer on my own with my brothers as labourers while my mother was in her final illness, it was natural that I would come home to take them over, so in 1982 we split the enterprise into two...I did the bees, he did the rest, as two separate businesses. I also had children of my own by then, and was subjected to some serious emotional blackmail by my wife. I DID miss them while away though, so it was not a hard decision to make that way. I also saw what befell older seafarers and had long since decided that my future eventually lay in bees and not at sea, but other matter accelerated that change. I had very little capital at all when I came back so did not start off with a big amount of cash behind me, and it was a real struggle.

So you cannot really compare what I did with the movement of an apprentice onwards to a fully fledged bee farmer.

However the way this happens is fairly well established in other countries. Old bee farmer wishes to retire. Young bee farmer negotiates a long term takeover deal with them. Agreed figure paid off over several seasons. You are right that this is an activity most bans will not touch due to high risk levels (they have a point).

[The Drone Ranger]

When I perfect my papier mache' Warre Hive I'm going to be rich beyond my wildest dreams
The Sun (cowpat) hive will recede into distant memory as all the neo revolutionary beekeepers convert to my system
At the end of the season the supers are just wrung out into a bucket and all the wasps stay where they belong on the outside of the hive
If it works for the Mills observatory it can work for me
viva la revolucion !!
my Spanish Villa awaits