Free beehive honey yield calculator: enter hives, supers, frames, yield per frame and jar price to get honey weight, jars and revenue per harvest.
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Enter your currency, the number of producing hives (exclude new or weak colonies that need their stores), honey supers per hive, frames per super, the yield per frame for your frame size, extraction efficiency (95 percent is a typical default, since honey stays on cappings and extractor walls), harvests per year, jar size and price per jar. The calculator returns total frames, honey per harvest and per year, jars per harvest, and revenue per harvest and per year, so you can order jars and plan extraction before the flow ends. These are planning estimates, not a harvest guarantee: weather, forage and colony health move real yields a lot.
Honey yield is frame arithmetic, and this beehive yield estimator turns beekeeping inputs into honey production figures. Two hives with two medium supers each and 10 frames per super give 40 frames. At 4 pounds per medium frame that is 160 pounds gross, and at 95 percent extraction efficiency it is 152 pounds of jarred honey, which fills 152 one-pound jars. At 8 dollars per jar that is 1,216 dollars per harvest. Change any input and the chain updates: more supers, heavier frames, better extraction, or a second harvest all flow straight through to jars and revenue.
Count only hives with honey supers ready for extraction and at least 80 percent of frames capped. Use your frame size for yield per frame: deep frames about 6 pounds, medium frames about 4 pounds, shallow frames about 3 pounds, with well-filled deep frames reaching 7 to 8 pounds. Set extraction efficiency honestly: 95 percent suits a good extractor run, while crush-and-strain and first-time runs land lower. Enter your real jar size and selling price to turn weight into containers and revenue in your own currency.
A 10-frame super holds about 60 pounds with deep frames, about 40 pounds with medium frames, and about 30 pounds with shallow frames. Per frame, plan on 6 to 8 pounds for deep, 3 to 4 pounds for medium, and about 3 pounds for shallow, remembering that frame weight includes wood and wax, so net honey is slightly less. An established hive produces about 30 to 60 pounds of surplus honey per year on average, and 30 to 100 pounds across temperate climates, with strong colonies in good flows passing 100 pounds. A 10-frame medium super is the most common planning unit, at about 40 pounds.
A hobbyist with 2 hives, 2 medium supers each, 10 frames per super, 4 pounds per frame and 95 percent extraction gets 40 frames, 152 pounds per harvest, and 152 one-pound jars. A sideliner with 20 hives on the same setup gets 400 frames, 1,520 pounds per harvest, and 1,520 jars. A first-year colony usually yields no surplus at all: the bees spend year one drawing comb and building stores, and most harvestable surplus arrives in year two, with exceptional first-year colonies in nectar-rich spots giving 10 to 20 pounds.
Surplus is what remains after leaving the colony enough to survive winter: about 60 to 70 pounds per hive in cold climates and 20 to 30 pounds where winters are mild. Never count brood-box honey in your harvest. Harvest a frame only when about 80 percent or more is wax-capped, which shows the honey is ripened to a safe moisture content of about 17 to 21 percent; shake the frame gently, and if honey leaks from uncapped cells it is not cured and will ferment. Weigh full supers with a luggage scale and subtract empty equipment weight for a pre-harvest check that beats frame counting.
Standard Langstroth hives yield more than top-bar hives under the same forage, because frames are extracted in a centrifugal spinner and the drawn comb goes back to the bees, saving them the honey they would burn building wax. Established Langstroth setups yield about 50 to 100 pounds per hive per year, against about 20 to 40 pounds for top-bar hives, where comb is crushed and strained and must be rebuilt each cycle. For extraction, a manual or electric spinner suits larger harvests, while crush-and-strain suits small harvests but destroys comb; either way, allow 5 to 10 percent extraction loss in your planning.
A single established beehive produces about 30 to 60 pounds of harvestable surplus honey per year on average, and 30 to 100 pounds across temperate climates. First-year colonies usually produce no surplus; the real harvest starts in year two.
About 60 pounds with deep frames, about 40 pounds with medium frames, and about 30 pounds with shallow frames, before extraction losses. A 10-frame medium super at 4 pounds per frame is the standard 40 pound planning figure.
A well-filled deep frame holds about 6 to 8 pounds, a medium frame about 3 to 4 pounds, and a shallow frame about 3 pounds. Thicker drawn comb and wider spacing push individual frames above those figures.
Total frames (hives × supers × frames per super) times yield per frame, times extraction efficiency. Two hives with two medium supers each give 40 frames × 4 pounds × 95 percent = 152 pounds per harvest. This calculator does the same chain for your numbers.
A typical 40 pound harvest fills 40 one-pound jars, or 80 half-pound jars. Divide your harvest weight by your jar size, rounding down, which is exactly what the jars-per-harvest result shows.
About 60 to 70 pounds per hive in cold climates and 20 to 30 pounds where winters are mild. Surplus is only the honey above that reserve. Over-harvesting is a leading cause of winter colony losses.
Usually a full calendar year. First-year colonies from packages or nucleus hives spend spring and summer drawing comb and building population, and bees consume roughly 8 pounds of honey to produce 1 pound of wax. Most harvestable surplus arrives in year two.
Langstroth, consistently. An established Langstroth setup yields about 50 to 100 pounds per hive per year, while top-bar hives average about 20 to 40 pounds, because crushed comb must be rebuilt each cycle instead of being returned after spinning.