Backyard Beehive Cost & Payback Calculator
For backyard beehives kept for honey. Treatment, feeding, and honey prices, all editable.
Defaults are sourced Australian figures as of mid-2026 - not guesses. Change anything below to match your own hives and prices.
Your hives
Beeswax (optional secondary product)
Treatment & feeding costs
Grocery comparison price
Initial setup
Your results
How This Works
Bees are different from every other animal on this site - they aren't fed a daily diet at all, since they forage for their own nectar and pollen. So this tool doesn't have a feed cost input, and there's nothing to offset with scraps or pasture. What it does account for is current cost pressure: varroa mite, a pest that only reached Australia in 2022, now costs beekeepers $60-100 per hive per year in treatment alone - a cost that simply didn't exist here a few years ago. Occasional supplementary feeding (sugar syrup or pollen patties during poor forage periods) and routine hive maintenance are added as a second, smaller yearly cost per hive.
On the production side, your honey yield per hive is valued at your grocery comparison price, with beeswax as a minor secondary product you can include or leave at zero - it's a byproduct of comb and cappings, not a serious income line on its own.
If you've entered a setup cost, the payback period divides that figure by your net result this year. If your numbers are running at a loss under the current settings, no payback period is shown - it wouldn't be an honest number to give you. Worth knowing: honey yield varies far more year to year than most livestock, driven almost entirely by seasonal forage, so treat any single year's result as one data point, not a guarantee.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where do the default numbers come from?
Sourced Australian figures as of mid-2026: a realistic backyard honey yield of around 20kg/hive/year, honey priced around $18/kg, and varroa mite treatment now costing beekeepers $60-100/hive/year since the pest's 2022 arrival in Australia. Every number is editable — these are honest starting points, not fixed facts about your hives.
Why is there no feed cost, unlike every other animal on this site?
Because bees don't eat a daily diet the way livestock do — they forage for their own nectar and pollen. There's nothing to offset with scraps or pasture, so this tool leaves that whole mechanism out rather than force a feed cost that doesn't reflect how bees actually feed themselves.
Why does varroa mite treatment get its own line item?
Because it's a new, significant cost. Varroa mite only reached Australia in 2022, and beekeepers now report $60-100 per hive per year in treatment costs alone — money that simply wasn't part of Australian beekeeping a few years ago. It's honest to call that out specifically rather than bury it in a generic maintenance line.
What does the payback period actually tell me?
It divides your entered setup cost (hives, suit, extractor, and so on) by your net result this year once treatment and feeding costs are accounted for, against the value of honey and beeswax produced. If your numbers are running at a loss under your current settings, there's no payback to show — the tool says so honestly rather than showing a misleading number.