How do beekeepers make money?

There is no single business model

• Honey-focused operations sell into a global commodity market as price-takers, or into a premium market if they can prove a floral source or origin.
• Pollination-focused operations earn contracted fees and treat honey as incidental.
• Queen and package producers sell bees rather than anything bees make, and are tightly seasonal.
• Smallholders and sideliners often sell locally, where a dependable buyer matters more than the headline price.
• Most real operations are some mixture, and the mixture shifts year to year with prices and losses.

And the costs are substantial

Feed, labour, transport and fuel, disease control, equipment and its replacement, extraction and packing, and above all colony losses — which have to be replaced before the next contract or honey flow, usually by buying or rearing queens and splitting colonies.