Total Veg Plot Costs 2010
Rent + Subs for 2 full plots £100
Seeds £20
Seed Spuds £20
Onion Sets £6
Growbags £15
Chicken Manure Pellets £8
Plastic 'wannabe' Polytunnel £61
Bamboo Canes £8
Total Costs £ 238
Total Veg Plot Harvests 2010
Rhubarb £ 25
Fartichokes £ 4
Volunteer Spuds £8
Lettuce £1
Radish £1
Garlic £15
Strawberries £2
Peas £2
Broad Beans £2
Total Veg Plot Harvests £ 61
Still a long way to go to break even (another £177 of crops yet before we break even), but with most of our crops still to harvest, there should be plenty of time for another years decent haul!
Beekeeping Balance Sheet
Well, our first viable Nucleus went to its new home last week, and the second Nuc has a buyer waiting (till they come back from their hols in a week or so), so as these are both going to folks who were on the Cheshire BBKA beginners course with Pat and Colin (we wanted to do the course, but the timing is impossible with our current rotas), we sold them at a reduced rate of £100 each, normally a nucleus of 5 frames of bees with a laying queen go for upwards of £150 each!
The 6 hives we are allowed in the apiaries at the plot are all now viable, the original 2 are very busy with 3 supers on 1 and 4 supers on the second (we had to give her a super to lay in aswell as the brood box shes so prolific!), and the other 3 new hives all seem to be doing well, with 2 supers on each! Hive 1 has picked up, even if shes not any busier than the new hives, but there are honey stores in all of the hives, some of which is beginning to be capped off, which should mean we will be able to take our first honey harvest from them in the near future!
Lee has named Hive 6's queen as 'Stingray', cos her bees are feisty and have stung one of us during both the last 2 weeks inspections, the other hives all seem a lot calmer than this hive!
So, with an total outlay of approx £3000 and a total income this year of £200 (once the 2 nucleii have gone), plus the 3 new colonies we've been able to split into hives this year, (worth in effect £450+) and factoring in the 18lb of honey we harvested last year - worth approx £90, then our total yield so far is £740, so we are still currently a long way in the red, but that should become a lot healthier balance sheet once we start to be able to harvest honey this year! If we have a bumper harvest of 550lb, then we could in effect break even this year, but with 3 of our hives being new and the existing ones still having to finish drawing out all of the super frames, the likelihood is that we wont have a bumper harvest this year, but that should change next year as all the super frames should then be drawn out allowing the bees to concentrate their efforts into honey production rather than wax production!
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