Honey production and the BackYard hives.

If you are going into the business of beekeeping with only production in mind our hives cannot compete on a hive per hive basis with commercial hives. In our top bar hives the bees have to draw out virgin comb each time one is removed, which slows down the production, but this also helps to keep the hive healthy. Also, top bar hives typically have less bees in them than a Langstroth hive, so production is less.

Remember that there is a trade off with production vs. a healthy hive. With our hives the comb is removed and extracted by crushing the comb and filtering it through a screen, which also yields wax. With the Langstroth hive, the combs are removed and the honey spun off. Then the combs are put back into the hive. This process invites disease and contamination into the hive. So "lots of honey" might only last until the hives are diseased. If you run multiple Backyard hives and are selling at the local farmers markets and pricing your honey as "organic" you should be doing quite well.

I've heard that Langstroth hives produce about 10 gallons of honey per year each, which is more than twice what a Backyard Hive will produce. Each of my hives produce around 3 to 4 gallons of honey per hive per year.