I raise bees and sell the honey. Good for a few thousand a year and the money makes up for the stings.
I have a couple of dozen chickens and sell the eggs, but this makes very little money since eggs are so cheap in the super market. It pays for the feed and that's it.
I wrote an Amazon book on how to play harmonica in the style of Sonny Boy Williamson II that sells steady and makes me beer money.
I sell a couple of my Science Fiction short story collections on Amazon. "Error Message Eyes" and "Frogs in Aspic", but after a good first year they sell only a couple of copies a month.
I sell four or five Science Fiction stories a year, but only occasionally do I get pro rates. It's nice to see your name in print, though.
How many times a day? I usually can't get away from being around the hives without a sting. Luckily the bees are usually calm and a honey bee sting is like a bad mosquito bite. It is not like a wasp or hornet sting.
If I open the hive without gloves and veil, I can get stung, but not always. If I have to "work the hive" I have to go full bee suit to prevent being stung.
If you can't handle being stung then raising bees is not a good hobby. If you can stand it, honey is like gold, and people will hound you for it.
That's amazing and I can't believe how much this sounds like what I'm trying to go for! I got my first two hives setup on Saturday and we finally moved our first group of 12 chickens out of the house and into the coop yesterday.
If you don't mind, how many hives do you have and how do you sell the honey? I was always thinking I would need more hives than I could ever manage to actually get enough to sell. My goal was to get into gourmet mushrooms and sell through the office or maybe get attached to a CSA or something.
I have 4 hives now out of 8 that made it through the fall. I can't seem to keep the hives alive in the winter even with treating. This spring it was Hive Beetles that killed them.
I'll split any hive that looks healthy - walk-away splits almost always work if you are careful to get a frame of brood into the queenless half.
One year I made $5,000 off of 6 hives, but usually $2,000 to $3,000. Except for the glass that is mostly profit. I can charge $12 a pound in a New York suburb. I put a sign up at the end of the driveway and 10 days later I am sold out. I harvest in June/July and again in October (Ragweed and Goldenrod make great honey).
Not OP, but suits can be really hot and uncomfortable so you only wear them if you must. For example, you would definitely wear one during harvest but maybe not if you are just doing a checkup. Not wearing one then obviously runs the risk of getting stung. Then there are some tasks, where you would like to wear protection but can't: for example, sometimes you need to remove the queen from a hive (for example, when she is growing too old, or because the hive is too small or too large, or you want to sell one). Doing that requires very fine motor control which is hard enough in thick gloves that many beekeepers will forgo them and take the stings instead.
