Small-scale beekeepers often price honey by guesswork or by copying a neighbour's jar price. The cost-per-kilogram method instead adds up every real cost of a season's harvest — equipment amortisation, your own time, jars and labels — and divides by the kilograms actually extracted. Whatever is left after that true cost is genuine profit, not a number that quietly includes unpaid labour.
Many hobbyist beekeepers unintentionally sell honey below their true cost because they never value their own labour — a colony that yields only 15–20kg in a poor season can double or triple the fair cost per kilogram compared with a strong 60kg+ year.
A 3D cost-breakdown tower stacks equipment overhead, labour and packaging into a true cost per kilogram of honey, then caps it with a gold margin segment showing a suggested retail price — adjust the sliders and watch the tower and jar shelf respond live.
Fixed overhead and labour costs are divided across the whole season's yield, so the same costs spread thinly over a big harvest but concentrate sharply into a poor one — the stacked tower's height reveals that relationship instantly.
Set annual yield, fixed overhead, labour cost, jar & packaging cost per kg, and your target margin. Watch the cost-per-kg tower and the suggested retail price update live, and see the honey jar shelf grow or shrink with yield.
A colony that yields only 15–20kg in a poor season can double or triple the fair cost per kilogram compared with a strong 60kg+ year, purely because the same fixed costs are divided across fewer jars.