---
title: "Commercial Beekeeper"
description: "Manages honey bee colonies for honey production and crop pollination, often moving hives between farms across the country."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/commercial-beekeeper"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Commercial Beekeeper

**Category:** Farming, Fishing, and Forestry · **SOC code:** 45-2093 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 45-2093.00

Manages honey bee colonies for honey production and crop pollination, often moving hives between farms across the country.

Also advertised as: Apiarist; Beekeeper; Migratory Beekeeper; Queen Breeder; Apiary Technician.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $36,670 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $17.63/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $27,360 to $54,080, with the middle half between $31,020 and $45,700
- **Total US employment:** 32,810
- **Typical entry education:** No formal credential
- **Preparation required:** Little or no preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone 1-2: Very Little to Some Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** -3.2% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 26,600 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 59/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 32,810 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $27,360 |
| 25th | $31,020 |
| 50th (median) | $36,670 |
| 75th | $45,700 |
| 90th | $54,080 |
| Mean (average) | $39,260 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| AK | $50,450 | $49,287 | 40 |
| WV | $48,460 | $54,147 | 40 |
| HI | $47,050 | $42,792 | 160 |
| MN | $46,020 | $46,663 | 580 |
| WA | $45,370 | $42,397 | 1,100 |
| ME | $42,170 | $43,452 | 140 |
| MD | $41,760 | $39,787 | 310 |
| VT | $40,730 | $41,579 | 80 |
| ID | $40,580 | $42,495 | 480 |
| ND | $40,320 | $45,324 | 130 |
| CO | $39,740 | $38,563 | 1,270 |
| NH | $39,520 | $37,940 | 130 |
| NJ | $38,960 | $35,807 | 250 |
| WY | $38,920 | $41,989 | 470 |
| NC | $38,750 | $41,081 | 910 |

34 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 49 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/commercial-beekeeper/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/commercial-beekeeper.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 202,100 in the 2025–2035 base year to 195,700 by the end of the cycle — a loss of 6,400 jobs, or -3.2%. Declining: -3.2% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 26,600 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** No formal educational credential (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Little or no preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone 1-2: Very Little to Some Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** Short-term on-the-job training.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| Some College Courses | 39.4% |
| High School Diploma or the equivalent (such as a GED) | 25.0% |
| Less than a High School Diploma | 18.0% |
| Associate's Degree or other 2-year degree | 8.9% |
| Post-Secondary Certificate | 8.5% |
| Bachelor's Degree | 0.2% |

## What the work involves

- Inspect colonies for strength, disease and queen health
- Monitor and treat varroa mites and bee diseases
- Feed colonies during nectar shortages
- Move hives to farms for pollination contracts
- Raise queens and split colonies
- Harvest, extract and package honey
- Manage crews, equipment and grower contracts

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Critical Thinking — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 2.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 2.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Operations Monitoring — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Operation and Control — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Troubleshooting — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Equipment Selection — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Quality Control Analysis — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Production and Processing — importance 3.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Biology — importance 3.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administration and Management — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mechanical — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Food Production — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Problem Sensitivity — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Control Precision — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Comprehension — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Arm-Hand Steadiness — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Trunk Strength — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Realistic (R), Conventional (C), Investigative (I).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| R — Realistic | 6.78 |
| C — Conventional | 3.74 |
| I — Investigative | 3.72 |
| S — Social | 2.50 |
| E — Enterprising | 1.92 |
| A — Artistic | 1.42 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ISTJ | 87.5 |
| ISTP | 78.4 |
| ISFJ | 71.8 |
| ESTJ | 70.0 |
| INTJ | 67.3 |

Best-fitting types: ISTJ.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Farmworker, Farm, Ranch, and Aquacultural Animal](https://nuecareer.com/careers/farmworker-farm-ranch-and-aquacultural-animal) — median $36,670
- [Animal Breeder](https://nuecareer.com/careers/animal-breeder) — median $51,130
- [Farmworker and Laborer, Crop, Nursery, and Greenhouse](https://nuecareer.com/careers/farmworker-and-laborer-crop-nursery-and-greenhouse) — median $35,660
- [Agricultural Equipment Operator](https://nuecareer.com/careers/agricultural-equipment-operator) — median $41,730
- [Meat, Poultry, and Fish Cutter and Trimmer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/meat-poultry-and-fish-cutter-and-trimmer) — median $38,300
- [Slaughterer and Meat Packer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/slaughterer-and-meat-packer) — median $40,130
- [Grader and Sorter, Agricultural Products](https://nuecareer.com/careers/grader-and-sorter-agricultural-products) — median $35,730
- [Agricultural Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/agricultural-technician) — median $49,630
- [First-Line Supervisor of Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Workers](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-farming-fishing-and-forestry-workers) — median $59,320
- [Animal Caretaker](https://nuecareer.com/careers/animal-caretaker) — median $35,360

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/commercial-beekeeper