What a First-Year Hive Costs: Mississippi State and Missouri's Extension Budgets

Two university extension budgets price out a first year of beekeeping, and they don't count the same things. This page compares what each one covers and, as importantly, what it leaves out; the cost calculator turns either one into an itemized, editable total for however many hives you're planning.

Mississippi State's P4136

Mississippi State's P4136, priced in October 2025, sets out a single hive's costs by category: "Costs are separated into six categories: hive costs, hive accessory costs, bee costs, equipment costs, supply needs, and miscellaneous costs." It's built around one full setup rather than a bare minimum: "The budget is based on a Langstroth 10-frame brood box and the necessary equipment for a beekeeper to have a full hive setup by the end of the first year." Everything in that budget's total is a one-time or first-year cost for getting a single hive running.

What P4136 leaves out of its own headline total is honey-harvesting equipment — the extractor, uncapping tools and bottling gear. Those are priced separately, in their own table, because a brand-new hive isn't expected to produce a crop worth harvesting in its first season. A beekeeper planning to extract honey in year one, rather than wait, needs to add that second table's cost on top of the establishment total; the cost calculator carries both, with the harvesting-equipment lines off by default.

Missouri's G692

Missouri's G692, priced in December 2025, starts from a pair of hives rather than one: "Using this budget, farmers can estimate the costs and returns of beekeeping." Its two-hive starting point is deliberate, and the budget looks past just the first year too: "Honey-producing operations with 10, 20 or 30 hives are modeled. Going from establishment to 10 hives can take three to five years with normal growth." The gear that serves an apiary rather than one hive — the suit, smoker, hive tool and similar shared equipment — is priced once for the pair; the bees, feed and other per-hive consumables are priced for each hive separately.

G692 also prints its own larger dollar-a-hive figures for a first year: 60 lb of honey expected per hive, priced at $12.00 a pound, $684 of what it calls operating costs per hive, and $841 for total costs per hive. Those totals count more than a hobbyist typically pays out of pocket for a first hive: G692's own operating-cost line includes labor and interest on money borrowed to get started, and its total-cost line adds depreciation and a share of overhead on top of that. Line items that don't leave your bank account, like the value of your own time, are still real costs the budget is tracking; they're just not cash. The cost calculator's Missouri preset lists those labor and interest lines but leaves them unticked by default, so its own total reads as a cash budget rather than G692's fuller accounting figure — tick them back on to see what they add.

Two different ways of drawing the line

Neither budget's exclusion is a mistake in the other's arithmetic; they're just answering slightly different questions. P4136 asks what a first hive costs to set up and keeps harvesting gear out of that question entirely, on the assumption that a first-year hive isn't producing anything to harvest yet. G692 asks what a hive costs to run, cash and non-cash together, and lets you choose which of its lines are money that's actually leaving your pocket. Reading either total as directly comparable to the other's, without checking what's ticked, understates one or overstates the other.

Using either budget

Both prices are dated to the month the publication set them, and both are checked here once a year for a newer edition. The cost calculator starts from either preset, itemized line by line, and lets you edit any price, add or remove a line, and set the number of hives you're actually planning — the arithmetic and the totals live there, not on this page.