The first and most important thing is, of course, the quality of the local honey.
Why are people complaining so much about selling local honey online these days?
Ultimately, it's because there's too much adulteration!
They only bought 100 jin of local honey, but they wanted to mix in 1,000 jin of fake honey!
This kind of thing is absolutely not allowed to happen in their cooperative!
The Shan family had been harvesting honey in the mountains for generations, and he knew all too well how things were done in this line of work.
Therefore, he set a rule for families willing to join the beekeeping cooperative: in the future, when the cooperative buys honey, it will not shake the good ones, because those are too easy to be adulterated. He only wants whole, unopened beehives!
“In the past, when everyone followed me to run in the mountains, their biggest fear was that something would happen to their own family members in the mountains. To be honest, I was afraid too!”
At this point, Shan Yan shook his head with a wry smile, pointed to Shan Hua who was being held in Jiang Yu's arms and patted to sleep, "As you all know, I'm not all alone anymore. With Shan Cha and the other two by my side, I've started to be afraid of dying now."
"So, I'm planning to set up a special team in the cooperative to collect local honey, and have a few of them follow me around to collect honey. We'll bring our own equipment to the beekeepers' homes to open the hives and collect the honey."
"This job isn't like rock climbing or honey harvesting, where you risk your life for money, and it's not that hard either. The main thing is that in the past, honey harvesting in the mountains was a job that relied on youth. Look at us, how many people in our line of work can still climb rock faces after the age of forty?"
“If it were just about running around in the mountains to collect honey, then you wouldn’t be making a living off your youth! As long as our beekeeping cooperative doesn’t fall apart, you guys will have a secure job for life.”
This is the secret weapon that gives Shan Yan the confidence to persuade his family members to keep bees with him and Jiang Xiaoman!
These people, whose ancestors made a living by rock climbing, who wouldn't want to earn money peacefully and steadily?
Even if you earn a little less, it's still much better than living in constant fear year after year.
He and his apprentices have the skills, and Jiang Xiaoman has the sales channels. If they join forces, they might actually be able to set up this beekeeping cooperative.
He won't go rock climbing in the deep mountains and forests to find honey anymore; he'll just take his apprentices to collect honey from house to house!
Although this is a bit cumbersome, it ensures that the honey they collect is genuine and authentic.
As long as there's no adulteration and customers are satisfied, year after year, a group of loyal customers can be accumulated.
Once the sales channels are stable, both the cooperative and the beekeepers can make money. Then this business will be a gold mine that can never be fully exploited!
The families of these apprentices had already been brainwashed once at home. Now, hearing Shan Yan and Jiang Xiaoman personally promise that as long as the cooperative is established, these apprentices who follow Shan Yan will all have secure jobs and won't have to risk their lives for money like before, they couldn't help but be tempted.
However, they also have their own concerns.
The first thing is the cost of making the beehives.
The old mountain valley has long been closed off for afforestation, and it is not allowed to cut down big trees at all. Although they have planted some on their own mountain, even if they cut them all down, it would only be enough to make twenty or thirty beehives at most. What can such a small number of beehives do?
To make a living by beekeeping, each household needs to build at least one hundred more beehives!
Buying the wood myself, plus various auxiliary materials and labor, the cost of making just the beehives is more than 20,000 yuan!
To be honest, if these mountain families could afford to spend 20,000 yuan at a time, they wouldn't send their children to risk their lives in the mountains to earn money.
To many city dwellers, 20,000 yuan might be just two or three months' salary, but in Langshan, some families grow potatoes and corn every year, and their entire family's annual income is less than 10,000 yuan!
After deducting household expenses, being able to save two or three thousand yuan a year is considered very thrifty.
More than 20,000 yuan, that's almost ten years' worth of savings for a family in the mountains...
“There’s no rush. We didn’t expect everyone to release over a hundred beehives in the first year,” Jiang Xiaoman quickly explained. “Everyone should act according to their capacity. Release as many beehives as you can this year. We also need to see how much honey each beehive can produce. If the yield is too low, we might have to find a way to plant some nectar-producing plants.”
Everyone was stunned for a moment, then burst into laughter.
Even the rocks and river fish couldn't help but laugh.
They have nothing else in that remote mountain valley, so why would they need to grow their own nectar-producing plants?
The only thing to worry about is that the beehives are placed too far away, and the honey might be stolen by greedy wild animals in the mountains.
However, Jiang Xiaoman's next words made everyone stop laughing.
"There's one more thing I want to say to my uncles and aunts. Well, cough~ I am, after all, from Langshan Village. If I run a beekeeping cooperative with Brother Shanyan and only help sell honey from your Laoshan Aozi area, but not from the villagers, my dad and I will be cursed to death in Langshan Village."
"So Shanyan and I discussed it, and we decided that you guys shouldn't rush to make so many beehives. Make as many as you can afford, and finish the rest next year when you've made some money."
“In that case, if any families in our village want to raise bees with us, I’ll let them make a dozen or so beehives and release them out to try it out first.”
Jiang Xiaoman explained, somewhat embarrassed.
The villagers of Laoshan'aozi, who were just hesitating about whether to make fewer beehives, immediately felt a sense of crisis!
What? The people of Langshan Village want to keep bees with them too?
What big money could they possibly make? The conditions down the mountain are much better than up in the mountains! Some families have two strong able-bodied men working away from home, and every year they bring back tens of thousands of yuan for the Spring Festival.
Who doesn't have tens of thousands of yuan in savings at home?
With start-up capital, wouldn't we be able to make more than a hundred beehives right away?
The only saving grace is that there are fewer honey sources at the foot of the mountain than in the mountains.
But they have so much land!
Moreover, Jiang Xiaoman also said that they planned to plant some honey plants on the idle wasteland. If that happens, wouldn't their old mountain valley have no advantage at all?
Everyone's thoughts immediately became unsettled.
Some quick-witted people have already silently sorted out their family relationships in their minds to see if there's anywhere they can borrow ten or twenty thousand yuan.
Anyway, beekeeping is unlikely to result in financial loss. The worst-case scenario is that a bear steals the beehives in the mountains, but that would only mean losing one season's worth of honey. You can simply move the beehives to a different location, introduce a new swarm of wild bees, and continue producing honey next year...
Thinking about it this way, it doesn't seem like making a few more beehives is a bad deal after all.
Jiang Xiaoman did not intentionally deceive the villagers in the old mountain valley into making more beehives to support his beekeeping business.
In fact, early the next morning, he went to find the village chief Jiang Youtian and told him about his plan to start a beekeeping cooperative with Shan Yan in their hometown.
"Originally, Brother Shanyan said that the people in Laoshan Aozi have been going into the mountains to harvest honey for generations, so he suggested that they try raising a batch first. I thought that many families in our village also have beehives, right? Anyway, I'm just buying honey from Laoshan Aozi to sell, so why can't I buy honey from our own village?"
"Uncle, do you think you should make some beehives and put them out? They're not hard to keep, but you have to check on them often to make sure the hives aren't taken by wild animals."
“I’ve calculated it. Based on the size of the beehives here, one hive can produce about ten kilograms of raw honey a year. According to this year’s purchase price, one kilogram of raw honey is 23 yuan, so ten kilograms would be 230 yuan. We can produce two to three batches of raw honey a year, so one beehive can earn at least five or six hundred yuan a year, and ten hives would be five or six thousand yuan… This is much more profitable than growing potatoes.”
"Beekeeping isn't just about selling raw honey; you can also make money selling honeycomb and bee pupae! All things considered, you can make at least a thousand yuan a year from a single beehive."
...
After hearing Jiang Xiaoman's calculations, Jiang Youtian couldn't sit still any longer.
Of course he knew that beekeeping could make money.
Jiang Youtian's family has several beehives, but they are used for their own consumption or as gifts. They never intended to make it a proper business.
But after hearing what Jiang Xiaoman said, if every family in Langshan Village could make twenty or thirty beehives, wouldn't they have an income of more than ten thousand yuan a year if the harvest was good?
Moreover, just as Jiang Xiaoman said, this income really felt like it was free.
For beekeepers in the mountains, the only expense is in making the beehives. To attract bees, they can ask beekeepers for some honey as a base. For overwintering, mountain people are used to leaving some honey in the beehives, so they don't need to spend extra money to buy white sugar to feed them.
Most importantly, Jiang Xiaoman solved the two most critical aspects of the beekeeping industry in the mountains: purchasing and sales.
According to him, if you join their beekeeping cooperative, you only need to take good care of your bees. When the honeycomb in the hive is full, just call the cooperative and Shan Yan will bring a professional honey harvesting team to your door to buy the honey. They will measure the quality of the raw honey on site and purchase it according to weight and grade.
In that case, beekeeping really doesn't require too much effort, right?
...
Even a shrewd person like Jiang Youtian was tempted, let alone the other families in the village.
Even Lang Ying, whose old house was not yet repaired, planned to make twenty beehives and put them on the mountain land given to her by the Jiang family.
The hillside is not far from the river. There is a locust tree forest, and nearby mountains also have wild peach, cherry, apricot, and wild chrysanthemum trees, all of which are natural honey sources.
Then she'll follow Jiang Xiaoman's example and clear out a half-meter-wide strip of land on the edge of her own mountain, planting honeysuckle along the entire edge!
This won't affect the original harvest of this land. Honeysuckle can also provide nectar for bees, and the flower buds can be picked, dried, and sold. Little by little, it can add up and allow the two girls to eat meat a few more times.
In no time, every household sprang into action.
Those who have wood at home are already busy sawing wood in the yard.
Since there was no wood available, they made phone calls everywhere to buy ready-made wood.
Just then, Jiang Xiaoman brought everyone more good news...
Chapter 131
"What? You mean we're all going to hire a car to go to the secondhand market to buy timber?"
After hearing Jiang Xiaoman's words, the old village chief was so shocked that he almost jumped up.
Is it still possible to do this?
Jiang Xiaoman showed the old village chief with his actions that, based on his years of scavenging, well... no!
With rich experience in "recycling and reusing waste", the second-hand market is indeed a good way to buy a large quantity of cheap timber for the villagers in a short period of time!
It is common knowledge that the owners of the second-hand market have access to the phone numbers of almost 90% of the individual scrap collectors in a given area.
Jiang Xiaoman plans to calculate how much scrap timber their village and the old mountain valley area need, and then post a notice at the county's second-hand market to buy second-hand timber.
He'll just have to wait for them to come to him.
Most importantly, when he makes beehives, he doesn't need a whole piece of good wood; some loose pieces of wood can also be used. His father even used leftover pieces of wood from making furniture to make two pitted beehives.
Surprisingly, these two incredibly ugly beehives are quite popular with wild bees. They don't even need to attract bees; every year, wild bees compete to build their nests there...
Moreover, he had inquired about the price of secondhand timber, and found that if it wasn't necessary to have a whole good board, it would only cost about one-tenth of the price of a whole good board on the market!
Take the cedar planks most commonly used in their countryside, for example. The cheapest double-sided planks with knots cost 150 yuan each. A single plank can't actually make much. If you replace them with second-hand planks of the same size, you can buy a bunch for just over ten yuan.
Moreover, these second-hand scrap boards are usually discarded by urban residents after renovations. In the past, even scrap collectors wouldn't take them. Now that he's paying to buy them, he doesn't believe those scrap collectors won't be tempted!
The villagers were having trouble buying lumber. Hearing that Jiang Xiaoman had connections to get cheaper secondhand timber, they didn't even need the old village chief to go door-to-door to inform them; they proactively approached Jiang Xiaoman to report their quantities.
However, Jiang Xiaoman also made it clear to them that, apart from the money for buying timber, the cost of hiring a vehicle and loading it onto the vehicle in the city would be shared equally by each family.
"That's only right! We would have to hire a car and people to help us buy the boards ourselves in town." The villagers didn't even need to do the math to know that this was a good deal.
After all, it's expensive for them to buy the boards directly from the manufacturer, and they also have to pay for their own transportation.
We asked Jiang Xiaoman to help us buy them. We can share a truck with several families, and second-hand boards are cheaper than new ones. So, we can save half the cost of making a beehive!
"Ah! Back in the old days, before we had to close the mountains for afforestation, we used the thickest tree trunks to make beehives. How sturdy those beehives were! One beehive could be passed down for three generations! And now? We're not allowed to cut down the big trees on our own mountains! Timber is so expensive! We can only buy second-hand timber!"