🍯 Value-Added Bee Products

About this simulation

A jar of honey is only the most visible part of what a hive produces. The same colonies also yield beeswax, propolis, pollen and royal jelly — each with its own harvest method, market price and season. This scene turns an apiary into five live pedestals, one per product, each topped with a bar that rises and falls with the money it earns per year.

How it works

• Diversification is the key economic lever: at 0% the apiary sells almost everything as raw honey; as it rises toward 100%, more comb, propolis, pollen and jelly are diverted into separate value-added products instead, trading a little honey volume for much higher-margin lines.
• Number of hives scales every product's output together — more colonies, more of everything.
• Season shifts which products are naturally abundant: spring favours pollen and royal jelly (heavy brood-rearing), summer is peak honey and wax, and autumn is when bees propolise the hive hardest against winter.
• Prices per kilogram differ hugely by product — propolis tincture and royal jelly sell for many times more per kilogram than honey, which is why even small harvested quantities can add meaningfully to income.

Controls

• Number of hives — size of the apiary (1–40 hives).
• Diversification — how much of the harvest is processed into non-honey products (0–100%).
• Season — spring, summer or autumn; changes each product's natural yield.
• Focus product — highlights one pedestal and orbits the camera toward it.
• Show £/kg price tags — toggle floating market-price labels above each bar.

Did you know?

Royal jelly and propolis tincture can fetch ten to twenty times the price per kilogram of jarred honey, which is why many small UK apiaries chase diversification even though the quantities harvested are tiny compared with a honey crop.