How to Sell Honey (Without Starting a Business)

You pulled more honey this season than your family can eat. Friends rave about it. A coworker offered to pay for a jar. Your neighbor asked if she could buy a few to give as gifts. At some point, you stopped wondering _if_ you should sell your honey and started wondering _how_.

Most of the advice out there assumes you want to launch a honey brand. Register with the IRS. Build a Shopify store. Design a logo. You have five hives in your backyard and 60 extra jars. You don't need a brand. You need to know what's legal, what to charge, and where to sell.

This guide covers all of it, from the labeling requirements for homemade food to pricing to handling orders when regulars start texting you for refills. Every price and rule below was checked at its source on October 1, 2026, unless the sentence gives another date, so you can see where each number came from.

Here is the whole process in five steps:

• Read your state's honey rule. Find the page from your state's agriculture or health department that covers honey, and check whether plain honey from your own hives is exempt from licensing.
• Weigh and label your jars. Put the word "honey," the net weight in ounces and grams (grams are required by federal law on jars sold across state lines, and Ohio lets jars sold on site skip them), and your name and address on every jar.
• Set your prices by the ounce. Start near $1 an ounce for a 1-pound jar and drop the per-ounce price a little on bigger jars.
• Pick one place to start. A farmers market booth, a table at the end of your driveway, or a text to the people who already asked.
• Give repeat buyers one link. One ordering page where regulars see what you have, pick a jar size and pay before pickup.

Can You Legally Sell Honey?

Yes, you can legally sell honey from your own hives in all five states whose selling rules we read for this guide (Texas, Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Florida), and the rules are simpler than most beekeepers expect. Honey often gets its own legal category that makes compliance easier than other homemade foods.

In four of the five states we read, plain honey from your own hives gets its own exemption. Texas treats the beekeeper as a farm. Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania have honey exemptions. Florida is the fifth: it puts honey on its approved cottage food list, next to loaf breads. In Texas, the health department says beekeepers who sell raw honey from their own hives are "farms" and do not need a food manufacturer license.

What's typically required to sell honey:

• Proper labeling (product name, net weight, your name and address)
• Selling only directly to the consumer where honey falls under cottage food rules, as in Florida, which bans wholesale; Texas, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania let you sell to stores under their honey or farm exemptions
• Compliance with your state's specific honey or cottage food regulations
• In some states, registering your hives with the state or county

What's typically NOT required:

• A commercial kitchen or extraction facility (though a clean, dedicated space is smart)
• A food handler's certificate. None of the Texas, Ohio, Wisconsin or Pennsylvania honey pages we read asks for one for plain honey from your own hives.
• FDA food facility registration. Farms are exempt under federal rules, and so is any business whose sales straight to consumers are bigger than its sales to everyone else, which FDA calls a retail food establishment. Texas's health department, citing FDA, counts extracting and bottling your own raw honey as a farm activity.
• A state food license, in most of the honey exemptions we read. A local business license is a separate question: your city or county decides whether you need one and what it costs, and our guide on whether you need a business license to sell food from home walks through how to check.

The one thing you need to do right now: Search "your state] selling honey regulations" and read what your state requires. Every state is different. Texas is permissive: on October 1, 2026 its health department's food manufacturer FAQ said "extracting and bottling raw honey whether for retail or wholesale" is an allowable farm activity, while pasteurizing honey is manufacturing that takes a license. That rule is a farm exemption, not the Texas cottage food law. Other states require a specific honey license or inspection, and some fold honey into their [cottage food law, as Florida does. Which of those you get depends on the bucket your state puts honey in, and our guide to whether you can sell homemade honey lays out all three, with the Ohio 75%-own-hives rule, the Wisconsin straining-and-creaming rule and the Pennsylvania pre-packaged-only rule written out from each state's own page. Your state's Department of Agriculture is the place to confirm it; call or email them if their page does not answer your exact question.

When you need more than basic compliance: Selling to stores is allowed under the farm or honey exemption in Texas, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania's honey guide puts wholesale sellers there on an 18-month inspection rotation. Florida's cottage food rules ban wholesale and cap sales at $250,000 a year. Shipping out of state is its own question, covered under selling online below. But for selling locally at markets, from your property, or to your community, your state's honey exemption, farm rule or cottage food law covers it in all five states whose selling rules we read.

When Do You Need a License or Permit to Sell Honey?

You usually need a license or permit to sell honey when you do more than extract, strain and jar honey from your own bees: buying honey from other beekeepers, adding flavors, pasteurizing, or selling unpackaged honey off your farm all changed the answer in at least one of the states we checked. Unflavored honey you harvested yourself is the easy case. The moment the jar holds something else, the rules move. Honey that is not yours depends on the state. In Wisconsin any of it takes a license, and in Ohio more than 25% does. Texas's health department lets you blend other beekeepers' raw honey into your own and stay exempt from licensing, as long as some of the honey is from your own hives.

Here is what each state page said on October 1, 2026:

Swipe left to read each state's full row.

We read each state's own page on October 1, 2026. This table covers six states, not the country. Your county, city and farmers market can add their own rules on top.

Three questions decide whether you need a permit:

• Whose honey is it? All from your own bees is the easy case. Ohio draws the line at 75% from your own hives, and Wisconsin requires a license the moment you buy honey from other beekeepers.
• What did you do to it? Straining and bottling are farm work in Texas. Pasteurizing, flavoring or whipping can count as manufacturing.
• Where and how is it sold? Pennsylvania lets you sell pre-packaged jars at a market without a retail license, but not honey dipped out of a bucket at the booth.

So can you sell honey without a permit? In the five states whose selling rules we read, yes, if it is unflavored honey from your own bees, packed in labeled jars and sold to the people who will eat it. In Pennsylvania that yes covers the license, not inspection: the state's honey guide, dated June 2014, says "Exemption to licensing fees is NOT an exemption to INSPECTION" and puts beekeepers who sell off the farm on a 24-month inspection rotation. Beekeepers in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida and California also register their hives with the state, which is separate from any food license; Texas and Wisconsin do not require it. Everyone else should confirm their own state before the first sale.

What Do You Need on a Honey Label?

Every honey jar you sell needs a label with three things: the word "honey," the net weight, and the name and address of whoever packed it, plus anything your state adds.

Federal requirements:

• The word "Honey" as the product name on the front of the label. FDA's 2018 guidance on proper labeling of honey and honey products says a food that contains only honey "must be named 'honey,'" may add its source, such as "Clover Honey," when that plant or blossom is the chief floral source and you can back that up, and needs no ingredient list because honey is a single-ingredient food.
• Net weight displayed within the bottom 30% of the front label (the principal display panel), as 21 CFR 101.7 requires, in ounces, and for a jar of 1 pound up to just under 4 pounds, ounces followed by pounds in parentheses (e.g., "Net Wt. 12 oz" or "Net Wt. 16 oz (1 lb)"). At 4 pounds and up, such as a 5-pound jug or a 12-pound pail, the same rule switches to pounds, like "Net Wt. 5 lb". That FDA rule says a metric weight "may also appear" and stops there. Grams come from a second federal law, the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act, which says the net quantity must use "the most appropriate units of both the customary inch/pound system of measure" and "the SI metric system." That law covers packaged food distributed "in commerce," which it defines as trade between a state and any place outside it, so it reaches jars sold or shipped across state lines. It does not require grams on "foods that are packaged at the retail store level" or on random-weight packages. FDA's Food Labeling Guide puts the result in one line: "Food labels printed must show the net contents in both metric (grams, kilograms, milliliters, liters) and U.S. Customary System (ounces, pounds, fluid ounces) terms." For jars sold only inside your own state, your state's rule decides, and Ohio's honey fact sheet asks for ounces on honey sold on site and both ounces and grams on honey sold off site, and Texas law asks a small beekeeper selling straight to consumers for both on every jar. Printing both on every jar, like "Net Wt. 12 oz (340 g)" or "Net Wt. 16 oz (1 lb) 454 g," meets the federal rule and Ohio's off-site rule at once. The bottom-30% placement rule does not apply when the front panel is 5 square inches or smaller.
• Name and address of the packer or distributor (that's you)

Important: honey is sold by weight, not volume. This is an easy label rule to get wrong. A jar that holds 12 fluid ounces of water holds about 18 ounces (about 508 grams) by weight of honey, because honey is denser than water: USDA's FoodData Central (its SR Legacy entry for honey) lists a cup of honey at 339 grams, so 12 fluid ounces (1.5 cups) comes to about 508 grams. Always weigh your filled jars and label the net weight of the honey, not the jar's volume.

State-specific additions vary but may include:

• A cottage food statement where honey falls under the cottage food law: Florida's statute requires "Made in a cottage food operation that is not subject to Florida's food safety regulations." in at least 10-point type (Fla. Stat. 500.80). The same statute also asks every cottage food label for the ingredients and for allergen information as federal labeling rules define it, so a Florida jar should still say "Ingredients: honey" even though FDA's guidance skips the ingredient list
• A not-inspected statement in Texas: a beekeeper who produces less than 2,500 pounds of honey a year from their own Texas hives and sells it raw and unblended, straight to consumers at home, a farmers market, a farm stand, or a municipal, county or nonprofit fair, festival or event, must print the net weight in both ounces and grams, their name and address, and "Bottled or packaged in a facility not inspected by the Texas Department of State Health Services." (Tex. Health & Safety Code 437.0199)
• Your state of origin, where your state asks for it
• Lot numbers or production dates (less common for cottage food)
• The word "Ungraded" if you do not grade your honey, which Wisconsin requires
• Grams only when you sell away from home: Ohio's honey fact sheet asks for ounces on honey sold on site and both ounces and grams on honey sold off site

"Raw" honey labeling: There's no official federal definition of "raw" honey. FDA's honey labeling guidance does not use the word at all. It generally means the honey hasn't been heated above hive temperature or ultra-filtered. If your honey goes straight from the extractor to the jar with basic straining, you can call it raw. Don't overthink this; most backyard honey is raw by default.

Start simple with labels. A printed label from your home printer on a standard shipping label works fine for your first season. Include the product name, net weight, your name and address, and any state-required disclaimers. You can upgrade to professional labels once you're selling consistently and want a more polished look. When you do, a few honey label ideas that name the blossom, the place and the harvest year give a shopper a reason to pick your jar over the one beside it. Printing your own costs about 12 cents a label at a sale price: Avery's 2-inch glossy round labels were on sale for $14.49 for 120 on avery.com on October 1, 2026, against a regular $28.34 (about 24 cents a label), with $5.95 shipping on orders under $75. Custom printed labels cost more per label, and the price depends on how many you order.

Do You Need a Nutrition Facts Label on Honey?

Most small honey sellers do not need a Nutrition Facts panel when they sell straight to the people who eat the honey, because federal rules exempt a business with no more than $50,000 a year in food sales to consumers, or $500,000 in total sales to consumers. The catch is in the fine print: the exemption only holds if you make no nutrition claims on the label, your signs or your ads, because the rule, 21 CFR 101.9(j)(1)(i), covers claims "on the label or in labeling or advertising."

We read that rule on eCFR, the government's online copy of federal regulations, on October 1, 2026. Here is what it means for a jar of honey:

• A plain label is fine. "Raw Wildflower Honey," the net weight and your name and address make no nutrition claim.
• A health or nutrient claim ends the exemption. Nutrition claims such as "low sodium" or "rich in antioxidants" put you back under the full Nutrition Facts rules. Ohio's honey fact sheet says the same thing about nutrient content claims and health claims.
• Sales are measured over time. The federal rule uses the most recent two-year average of your business to decide which side of the line you are on.
• Jars you sell to a store are a separate case. You are not the one selling those jars to the person who eats them, so the exemption to check is FDA's low-volume one, 21 CFR 101.9(j)(18). It covers a business with fewer than 100 full-time-equivalent employees that sells fewer than 100,000 units of that product in the US a year, with the same no-claims condition. A business with fewer than 10 employees selling fewer than 10,000 units a year does not have to file the exemption notice with FDA.

Leave allergy or health promises off the jar, your booth sign and your posts. Plenty of shoppers buy local honey because they believe it helps with seasonal allergies, and that belief is theirs to hold. On a label, a promise that honey eases allergies is a claim to treat a disease, and federal law, as FDA's page on how the law defines a drug quotes it, counts "articles intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease" as drugs.

How Much Should You Charge for Honey?

Price your local, raw honey at roughly $1 per ounce for a 1-pound jar, which comes to about $16. That was the middle price of a 1-pound jar at five small apiaries' own websites on October 1, 2026. Larger jars bring the per-ounce price down, and small jars run a little higher.

Here is what six small apiaries, a California farm store and a Utah honey bottler charged for plain honey on their own websites that day:

Scroll sideways to see every farm.

Every price was loaded from the farm's own product page on October 1, 2026, before tax and shipping. These are six apiaries, a farm store (Primal Pastures, which sells honey from hives in Murrieta, California but does not say whose they are) and one bottler, The Honey Jar, which jars honey from beekeepers in the Intermountain West; they are not a national survey. Beekeepers.com sells the same 1-pound size for $12 in a listing that does not name the container, $15 in a glass jar and $20 in a glass bottle; we used the $15 jar. The container moves the price too.

These are prices for local raw honey sold directly. Specialty honeys (single-flower varietals such as sourwood or orange blossom, infused honeys, honeycomb) can command more. Hot honey is the clearest example: on October 1, 2026, Beekeepers.com charged $15 for a 12-ounce jar of its infused hot honey and $10 for the same size of plain honey, a $5 gap from the same shop, and this breakdown of how much to sell hot honey for works out why a 12-ounce jar from your own hives holds at $15. Prices also vary by region. The cheapest 1-pound jar in our check, $9, came from a Wisconsin farm that sells for local pickup or delivery only, and the most expensive, $20, came from Shuga Bee Farm in North Carolina and Honey Land Apiaries in Illinois, which sells it as organic.

Three things move your price up or down:

• The container. Glass reads as more premium than plastic. One Kansas beekeeper charged $15 for a pound in a glass jar and $12 for its plain 1-pound listing, which does not name the container.
• The jar size. Per ounce, a 3-pound jar sold for about 60 cents and an 8-ounce jar for $1.13 to $1.50. Small jars cost you more in glass and labels per ounce, so charge for that.
• The honey itself. A named single-flower honey, comb honey or a flavored jar sells for more than plain wildflower, as long as your state's rules allow the flavored kind.

Pricing is only half of it. Getting the jars in front of buyers can cost $0 at a driveway table or $30 to $45 a day for a booth at the farmer rate at the three farmers markets we checked, and our guide on how to sell food from home covers the setup steps that apply to any homemade product, honey included.

Why local raw honey commands a premium. Your honey is not competing with the plastic bear bottle at the grocery store. It's competing with other local, raw honey. USDA's honey report shows US production fell 14% in 2025 to 116 million pounds, while the average price across all sales channels rose 27% to $3.05 a pound. People buy local honey because they trust the source, believe in allergy benefits, and want to support local beekeepers. Price your honey like the premium product it is.

If you sell through local shops or co-ops, we suggest quoting 50 to 60 percent of your retail price, which leaves the shop room to sell at your price. A jar you sell for $16 at the farmers market would wholesale for $8.00 to $9.60 to a shop that marks it up to $16 on their shelf. This works for volume, but your margins are thinner. Do the math and make sure it's worth it for your supply.

How Much Does Honey Sell for per Pound?

US beekeepers got an average of $7.15 a pound for honey they sold retail in 2025, $2.45 a pound selling to co-ops and private buyers, and $3.05 across every channel, according to the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service honey report released March 13, 2026. That gap is the whole case for jarring your own honey: the same pound is worth almost three times as much in a jar with your name on it.

What those numbers mean for you:

• Darker and specialty honey sells for more at retail. USDA's "all other honey, area specialties" class averaged $8.94 a pound retail, and white honey $5.96.
• Your state matters. Across all channels, North Carolina beekeepers averaged $7.99 a pound in 2025, the highest state price USDA published, and North Dakota beekeepers $1.89, the lowest. North Dakota was also the biggest producer, with 30.8 million pounds.
• Small sellers beat the averages. USDA's retail figure comes from beekeepers with at least five colonies who count as farms, meaning $1,000 or more in agricultural sales a year, from small farms to large ones. The 1-pound jars in our farm check were listed at $9 to $20 a pound, and all five were above USDA's $7.15 retail average.

So how much is a pound of honey worth? About $2.45 to a packer, about $7 on average at retail, and $15 to $20 in a 1-pound jar on four of the five apiary websites we checked. Which number you get depends on whether you jar it and sell it yourself.

What Does a Jar of Honey Cost You to Make?

A 1-pound glass jar of honey costs about $1.51 in jar, lid, label and shrink band, using supplier prices loaded October 1, 2026, before shipping on the supplies and before you count the honey itself. If you value your honey at the $2.45 a pound a packer would pay, the full cost is about $3.96 a jar, and a $16 jar leaves room to spare.

Your actual costs per jar:

Swipe across to see where each number comes from.

Supplier prices loaded October 1, 2026 on blythewoodbeecompany.com, foxhoundbeecompany.com and avery.com, before shipping: Foxhound sells its glass for pickup at its Irondale, Alabama store or ships it by ground or freight, and Avery charged $5.95 shipping on orders under $75. Blythewood listed the flint jar lids and the shrink bands as out of stock that day, so plan to buy from whichever supplier has them. Card fees from Square's fee page and findhomegrown.com/signup, same day.

For a typical 1-pound jar, your packaging costs are roughly $1.51. At a selling price of $16, a $0.76 card fee on Homegrown leaves $13.73 per jar, or $11.28 more than you would have made selling that pound of honey to a packer. If you sell 30 jars at $16 at a single market, that's $480 in sales, minus $45.30 for jars, labels and bands and a $40 booth fee, which leaves $394.70 before card fees and your time. If all 30 buyers tap a card on a Square reader, card fees take another $16.98.

Where Is the Best Place to Sell Honey?

Farmers markets are the easiest place to start selling honey, at a booth fee of $30 to $45 a day for a 10-by-10 at the farmer rate at the three markets we checked, or $10 to $20 for Port Orchard's backyard-farmer space, so start there and expand as your supply and confidence grow. People go to farmers markets specifically looking for local honey, and the face-to-face interaction builds trust fast.

Farmers Markets

At the three markets we checked, booth fees for a beekeeper selling their own honey ran $30 to $45 per market day for a 10-by-10 space. On October 1, 2026, Port Orchard Farmers Market in Washington charged farmers $45 on Saturdays and $30 on Wednesdays, plus a $50 application fee for new vendors, and offered a "backyard farmer" space (5 by 10 feet, no membership fee) at $20 on Saturdays and $10 on Wednesdays for people who sell their own extra farm or garden products up to 5 times a year. The St. Johns Farmers Market in Portland, Oregon charged farmers $42 and non-farmer food vendors $47, so a beekeeper selling their own honey books the $42 farmer booth, and the Downtown Fond du Lac Farmers Market in Wisconsin charged $40 a week. Bring samples: a small tasting jar with craft sticks or disposable spoons helps turn browsers into buyers.

Tips that work for honey vendors at markets:

• Display different jar sizes so customers can choose their price point
• Have a sign showing your apiary name, where your hives are located, and that the honey is raw and local
• Accept card payments (Square or similar; you'll lose some sales if you're cash-only)
• Bring business cards or a printed card with your ordering link for people who want to reorder
• Check the market's insurance rule before you apply: St. Johns requires $1,000,000 in liability insurance naming St. Johns Center for Opportunity, the group that runs the market, as an additional insured

Our farmers market vendor guide is a full walkthrough of market selling, from the application to your first booth.

From Your Property

Selling from your property costs $0 in booth fees and is the simplest channel there is. A small table or farm stand at the end of your driveway, a sign on the road, and an honesty box or a way to accept payment. This works especially well in rural and suburban areas where foot or car traffic passes your property.

Some beekeepers put a cooler on the porch with jars, a price list, and a Venmo QR code. No scheduling, no booth fees, no setup time. In Pennsylvania, selling on the farm where all the honey is produced is exempt from the retail license even for unpackaged honey, which makes the farm stand the most flexible spot there. Mayberry Farms in Wisconsin sells its $9 pound jars for local pickup or delivery from its farm, with no booth in the price.

Friends, Family, Neighbors, Coworkers

Your first customers are already in your life. These are people who've tasted your honey, asked for more, or would buy it the moment they knew it was available. Tell them what you have, what it costs, and how to get it. Don't underestimate this channel; these buyers already trust you and your honey.

Local Shops, Co-ops, and Gift Stores

Specialty food stores, farm stores, gift shops, and co-ops often look for locally sourced products. Approach them with a sample, your pricing (we suggest 50 to 60 percent of retail), and a professional-looking label. Start with one or two stores and see how it goes. The advantage is consistent volume without your time at a booth every weekend. The trade is price: a store pays about $8.00 for a jar you would sell for $16, and the guide to where to sell honey sets that against six other places, from your own link at $0.76 in fees on that jar to a co-op or packer paying $2.45 a pound.

Online Orders for Regulars

Once you've sold at a few markets, you'll have repeat customers who want to reorder between markets. Rather than managing these through texts and DMs, give them one link where they can see what's available, place an order, and pay. This is especially valuable for honey because supply is limited: when you post that fresh harvest is available, regulars can grab it before you sell out at the next farmers market.

Can You Sell Honey Online?

Yes, you can sell honey online in at least some states, and the rules on shipping differ: Florida's cottage food page lets home producers sell honey on their own website and by mail order, while many small beekeepers sell online for local pickup and skip shipping. Selling online and shipping are two separate decisions.

Here is how the two kinds of online selling compare:

• Online orders with local pickup or delivery. Customers order and pay on a web page, then pick up at your market booth, your porch or a set spot. This keeps the sale local, so the same state rules as your market table apply, and nothing heavy gets shipped.
• Shipping honey to other states. This is where you need to read your state's rule closely. Florida's cottage food rules allow mail order, but Ohio says flavored honey from an exempt beekeeper can only be sold in Ohio. Our guide on whether you can ship cottage food covers the rules state by state.
• Marketplaces like Etsy and Amazon. These reach shoppers nationwide, but you pay fees on every sale and still have to pack and ship glass.

Shipping adds real cost to every jar. A pound of honey in a glass jar is heavy and breakable, and on Etsy the 6.5% transaction fee also applies to what you charge for shipping. Hills Honey in New Hampshire ships its 1-pound and 2-pound jars anywhere in the US but keeps its 4-pound jar for local pickup only, a sign of where a jar gets too heavy to ship.

If you want a full comparison of online honey selling tools, our guide to the best platform to sell honey online lays them out side by side. For most backyard beekeepers, the cheapest online setup is a local ordering page with pickup. If that is your plan, a Homegrown storefront for honey pre-orders takes the order and the payment online and lets each customer choose a pickup spot, so you never pack a jar of honey for the mail.

How Do You Handle Orders When People Keep Texting You for Honey?

Set up a single ordering link and share it everywhere; one link replaces the texts, DMs and porch visits with a single list of who ordered which jar and who has paid. Here's why it matters.

You sell at a Saturday market. People love your honey. A few of them ask how they can get more. You swap numbers or Instagram handles. By Tuesday, you have texts from three people, a DM on Instagram, and your neighbor stopped by asking if you have any left.

This is a good problem. It means people want your honey. But managing orders through personal messages gets messy fast. You lose track of who asked for what, you're not sure who's paid, and you spend more time responding to messages than you do working with your bees.

What you actually need is one link. A single URL where customers can see what you have available, select what they want, and pay. You share this link everywhere: text it to regulars, put it on your market signage, post it on social media. Everyone orders through the same place, and you get a clean list of who ordered what.

Pre-orders are a natural fit for honey. Unlike baked goods that you make every week, honey is a seasonal harvest. When you post that the new harvest is available, a pre-order link lets customers claim their jars before you sell out. This is better for you (paid orders before you jar, no inventory sitting around) and better for customers (they actually get the honey they want instead of showing up to a sold-out farmers market).

Etsy works if you want to ship honey nationally, but honey is heavy and fragile; shipping costs cut into margins fast, and many small beekeepers sell locally anyway. Etsy also takes a 6.5% transaction fee, a $0.20 listing fee and 3% plus 25 cents in payment processing on each US sale, which comes to $1.97 on a $16 jar before shipping. A Google Form is free but does not collect payment, so you are matching form submissions to Venmo payments, which is the same chaos in a different app. Square is cheap for the card reader at your table, at 2.6% plus 15 cents, but its online checkout runs 3.3% plus 30 cents.

Homegrown is $10 a month billed annually ($12.50 month to month), with no percentage fees beyond standard payment processing of 2.9% plus 30 cents, which you pay and your customer does not. List your jar sizes as options on one listing, each with its own price, post that the new harvest is available, and share the link. Set the quantity to the jars you have, and the count goes down automatically as people order. Customers order and pay before you even start labeling jars, then pick up at your market booth, your porch or a spot you choose, or you deliver within the radius you set. Homegrown will not help you sell to grocery stores or ship cases of honey across the state; for that, you need a different setup. It has no countdown "drops" feature and no way to price by the pound, and your customers create a Homegrown account the first time they order. Your storefront is listed on Homegrown's marketplace, but plan on most orders coming from people you send to your own link. For local pre-orders from people who already know they want your honey, it replaces the group chat for less than the price of one jar per month.

Here is the full fee stack on one $16 jar of honey, and on a month of 50 jars:

Swipe across for every fee in the stack.

We checked every fee on each company's own page (findhomegrown.com/signup, Square's fee help page, and Etsy's Fees and Payments Policy and Etsy Payments Policy) on October 1, 2026. Card processing is figured on the $16 price; charged on a total that includes tax or shipping it runs a few cents higher, and Etsy's 6.5% also applies to what you charge for shipping. The Square card reader row assumes you already own a reader. Etsy advertising fees are not included.

How Do You Manage Honey's Seasonal Supply?

Use scarcity to your advantage: honey's limited seasonal harvest drives demand rather than limiting your business, and an average producing colony gave 48 pounds in 2025, from 27 pounds in Oregon to 89 in Mississippi among the 20 states USDA published, so weigh last year's harvest to plan your jars. You harvest once or twice a year, and when this season's honey is gone, it's gone until next year.

This is actually a selling advantage, not a limitation. "Limited harvest" and "seasonal availability" are real, and customers respond to it. Local honey from a specific beekeeper in a specific place is inherently limited, and people value that.

How to manage limited inventory:

• Pre-orders before harvest. Let your regulars and market contacts know when you're planning to extract. Open pre-orders a week or two before so people can reserve jars.
• "New harvest" announcements. A simple text or social media post ("2026 spring harvest is bottled and ready") creates urgency without being pushy.
• Waitlists for when you sell out. If your honey sells faster than expected, collect names and email addresses. Contact them first when the next batch is ready.
• Reserve some stock. Don't sell everything at your first farmers market. Hold back inventory for online orders, holiday gifts, and the loyal customers who order between markets.

Extending your products beyond liquid honey:

• Creamed honey: honey you let crystallize, usually with a starter from an earlier batch, so it sets smooth and spreadable, easy to make from your own stock. Wisconsin lets you cream your own honey without a license, but whipping air into it takes one there. Commands a premium. On October 1, 2026 that premium was $1 a jar at the three honey companies we found listing plain and creamed jars of the same size (Cox's Honey, $15 plain and $16 creamed for 11 ounces; Savannah Bee Company, $18 plain and $19 for what it calls whipped honey, for 12 ounces; Hills Honey, $16 plain and $17 creamed for a pound, with the creamed jar sold out that day). A fourth shop, Beekeepers.com, had no like-for-like pair: its plain creamed was sold out, the $15 creamed jars in stock (8 ounces) were flavored, and its 8-ounce plain honey was $9, or $12 in a glass bottle. What to charge for creamed honey, checked September 25, 2026, works out a $14 half-pint from about $2.92 in supplies. Our guide to selling whipped and creamed honey from home covers the seed method.
• Infused honeys: hot honey (with chili), lavender honey, cinnamon honey. Small batches, higher margins: Beekeepers.com charged $15 for 12 ounces of infused honey against $10 for plain. Check your state's rules; infused honey may be classified differently than pure honey, as Ohio and Wisconsin both do.
• Honeycomb: cut comb in containers, no processing needed. Beekeepers.com listed a small comb at $15 and a large one at $25, without giving their weights. More in our guide to selling comb honey from home.
• Beeswax products: candles, lip balm, beeswax wraps. Candles and wraps are not food, which makes them easy to add to a honey table, while lip balm falls under FDA's definition of a cosmetic, which includes skin moisturizers, and has labeling rules of its own. Our guide to selling beeswax products at the farmers market covers what each one needs.

Value-add products help you sell more from the same harvest and give customers variety. But don't launch with six products. Start with your honey, and add one or two once you know what your customers want.

How Do You Price Honey for Gifts, Weddings and Corporate Orders?

Price gift and bulk-gift honey orders at a per-jar discount for quantity, which came to about 15 to 38 percent less per jar at two of the three shops we found publishing dozen-jar prices (the third, Blythewood Bee Company, charged the same $9 a bear by the dozen as singly), and quote gift packaging (boxes, ribbons, custom labels) as its own line. Weddings, holiday client gifts and teacher gifts can move dozens of jars in a single order.

Here is what farms charged for gift and quantity orders on October 1, 2026:

Slide the table left to see the quantity prices.

Prices loaded from each farm's own product pages on October 1, 2026. Three shops' quantity prices are data points, not a market rate. Corporate and wedding orders are often quoted one by one, so many farms do not publish a price at all.

How to set up these orders:

• Set a minimum. A dozen jars is a natural order size, since many jar cases hold 12, including Blythewood's flint, hex and Muth jars and Foxhound's pint mason jars.
• Price per jar, then show the total. "12 jars at $7 each, $84" is easier to say yes to than a single number with no breakdown.
• Charge for extras separately. Custom labels, ribbons or gift boxes take your time and money, so quote them on their own line.
• Take payment up front. A large custom order should be paid before you jar and label it.

The Honey Jar's drop from $8.99 for one 12-ounce jar to $7.00 a jar in a set of 12 is the kind of step our guide to corporate gifting bulk pricing tiers builds a whole price list from. For weddings, Blythewood Bee Company sold a 1.59-ounce mini bear of raw honey for $4.00, and our guide to edible wedding favors covers how to price a bulk favor order.

Can You Sell Honey in Bulk?

Yes, and bulk honey sells two very different ways: to a co-op or packer at about $2.45 a pound (the 2025 USDA average), or to home bakers and heavy users in jugs and pails at $5.42 to $8 a pound at the three shops we checked. Bulk is how you move a big harvest fast; jars are how you get the best price.

Here is what bulk honey sold for on October 1, 2026:

• Gallon jug or pail (12 pounds): $75 at Beekeepers.com and $74.99 for clover at The Honey Jar, about $6.25 a pound, and $65 for a 12-pound clover bucket at Cox's Honey, about $5.42 a pound.
• 5-pound jug: $40 at Beekeepers.com, $8 a pound, and $31 for clover at Cox's Honey, $6.20 a pound.
• 5-gallon pail (60 pounds): $349.95 for clover at The Honey Jar, about $5.83 a pound.
• To a co-op or private buyer: $2.45 a pound on average in 2025, from USDA's honey report.

Where to sell bulk honey:

• Home bakers, mead brewers and cooks who go through honey fast and want a pail.
• Other beekeepers who sold out early. Check your state first: in Wisconsin the buyer needs a license to sell honey they bought, and in Ohio a beekeeper must get at least 75% of their honey from their own hives to stay exempt.
• Co-ops and packers, when you have more than you can jar and sell yourself.

What Do You Need to Bring Honey to Market?

To bring honey to market you need four kinds of resources: the honey and the equipment to get it out of the comb and into jars, packaging, the paperwork your state and market ask for, and a way to take payment and orders. Most of it is a one-time cost, and the per-jar part is small.

Equipment to extract and bottle:

• An extractor, or a crush-and-strain setup if you have only a few hives
• An uncapping knife or scratcher
• A strainer and a bottling bucket with a gate valve
• A kitchen scale to weigh every filled jar

Packaging, priced October 1, 2026:

• Glass jars at $0.92 to $2.86 each, by style, plus 35 to 50 cents for a lid when the case leaves lids out
• Labels at about 12 cents each if you print them yourself
• Shrink bands at about 6 cents each

Paperwork:

• Your state's honey rule, read and saved
• Hive registration if your state requires it, as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida and California do
• Liability insurance if your market asks for it. FLIP, a food vendor insurance program, listed an annual policy from $299 a year on October 1, 2026.

Ways to sell and get paid:

• A card reader for the booth
• An ordering link for regulars, printed as a QR code on your sign

Jar style changes the look and the cost. Blythewood Bee Company sold 12 glass hex jars with lids for $20.35 and 12 Muth jars with corks and shrink bands for $34.32 on October 1, 2026, while Foxhound Bee Company sold 12 pint mason jars for $10.99, lids sold separately.

How Much Money Can You Make Selling Honey?

At USDA's 2025 average of 48 pounds of honey per colony that produced a harvest (USDA leaves out colonies that gave none), three hives that each give a harvest come to about 144 pounds and ten such hives about 480 pounds, which is $2,304 to $7,680 in sales if every pound sells in a $16 jar. Real harvests swing a lot with weather, region and hive health, so treat those as an average year, not a promise.

Here is the math at three hive counts, using the $16 middle price for a 1-pound jar, $1.51 a jar in packaging, and the $2.45 a pound a packer would pay instead:

Scroll right to see all five columns.

Yield is USDA's 2025 national average per producing colony, from beekeeping operations running at least five colonies (USDA NASS honey report, March 13, 2026). The $16 jar price is the middle of five apiaries' 1-pound prices on October 1, 2026. Packaging is our per-jar cost from the table above. Booth fees, card fees, equipment and your time are not included.

Selling every jar at full price takes markets, regulars and time. One approach is to jar what you can sell at retail and sell the rest in bulk. Jar sales minus packaging, compared with the packer column, is roughly what your booth fees, card fees and time come out of.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need a beekeeper's license to sell honey?

Not a food license, for plain honey from your own hives, in the five states whose honey rules we read on October 1, 2026: Texas, Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Florida each exempt it from food licensing in some form. But three of those five require you to register your hives with the state agriculture department, and so does California. Texas and Wisconsin do not: the Texas Apiary Inspection Service says "The state of Texas does not require a beekeeper to register," and Wisconsin's apiary program page says "honey bee hive registration is not required in Wisconsin." Ohio's law says "No person shall maintain an apiary unless the apiary is registered," and its apiary registration page says there is no fee as of October 1, 2025. Pennsylvania's Bee Law says "The owner of an apiary located in this Commonwealth shall register the apiary with the department," and its apiary page puts the fee at $10 for about two years. Florida's beekeeper registration page says "Each beekeeper having honey bee colonies in Florida is required by law to register." California lists apiary registration and a registration fee as required on its agriculture department's page. Registration is about bee health, not food safety: California runs it through its Apiary Protection Program. Check with your state's Department of Agriculture for the exact requirements where you live.

How much can I make selling honey?

A backyard beekeeper with 3 to 10 hives that each give a harvest would get about 144 to 480 pounds of honey in an average year at USDA's 2025 figure of 48 pounds per producing colony (USDA leaves out colonies that gave no honey, and a first-year or failing hive may give none); in 2025, the 20 states USDA published averaged 27 to 89 pounds a colony, and your region, weather and bee health can move it a lot. Sold in 1-pound jars at $16, the middle price we found on five apiaries' websites, that is $2,304 to $7,680 in sales before packaging, booth fees and your time. Add value-add products like creamed honey, infused honey, or beeswax candles and the number goes up. This isn't quit-your-job money for most small beekeepers, but selling honey can pay for your beekeeping hobby and then some.

Can I sell honey on Etsy or Amazon?

You can, but for a small local producer selling honey, it usually doesn't make sense. Shipping honey is expensive (it's heavy), packaging needs to be secure (glass + liquid = risk), and platform fees eat into margins: on Etsy, a $16 jar costs you about $1.97 in fees before shipping, based on its fee pages on October 1, 2026. Many small beekeepers sell locally, at farmers markets, through online pre-orders with local pickup, and through word of mouth. You'll make more money per jar and spend less on logistics.

What's the best jar for selling honey?

Glass jars are perceived as more premium than plastic and are better for repeat customers who might reuse or return them; one Kansas beekeeper charged $15 for a 1-pound glass jar and $12 for its plain 1-pound listing, which does not say glass. Popular options include classic hex jars (the short, wide ones you see at farmers markets), mason jars (familiar, affordable), and Queenline jars (the traditional "honey jar" shape). Buy by the case to save: on October 1, 2026, Blythewood Bee Company sold 12 glass hex jars with lids for $20.35, and Foxhound Bee Company sold 12 pint mason jars for $10.99, with lids sold separately at 12 for $5.99. If customers return jars, Ohio's honey rules say reused jars must be washed and sanitized and lids never reused.

Do I need insurance to sell honey?

None of the state honey pages we read requires insurance for small honey sales. However, many farmers markets require proof of coverage before you can set up a booth; the St. Johns Farmers Market in Portland, Oregon requires $1,000,000 in liability coverage naming St. Johns Center for Opportunity, the group that runs the market, as an additional insured. FLIP, a food vendor insurance program, listed an annual policy from $299 a year on October 1, 2026. If you're selling regularly at farmers markets, it's worth the cost for both access and peace of mind, and our guide to farmers market vendor insurance compares the options.

How should I store honey before selling it?

Store honey in a cool, dry place away from direct sunlight; a pantry or closet works fine. Honey doesn't spoil, but it can crystallize over time, especially in cooler temperatures. Crystallized honey is still perfectly safe and sellable, and some customers even prefer it. If you want to re-liquify crystallized honey, gently warm the jar in a warm water bath; Hall Apiaries in New Hampshire tells its customers to use a water bath at 80 to 90 degrees until the honey turns liquid.

Can I sell honey at a craft fair or holiday market?

Yes, and holiday markets can be especially profitable for honey vendors. Honey products make natural gifts, and you can package gift sets with different varieties or pair honey with beeswax candles; one Kansas beekeeper listed a 1-pound holiday gift jar for $20 on October 1, 2026, beside everyday 1-pound glass at $15 for a jar and $20 for a bottle. Follow the same labeling and cottage food rules as farmers market sales, and check with the event organizer about any additional requirements like proof of insurance or a cottage food permit.

Is it legal to sell raw honey?

Yes. Raw honey is legal to sell, and Texas's health department specifically treats extracting and bottling raw honey from a beekeeper's own bees as a farm activity. "Raw" has no federal definition, so it describes how you handled the honey (strained, not heated or ultra-filtered), not a separate legal category. The one firm warning comes from the CDC, which says not to feed honey to a child younger than 1 year old.

Related Reading

More on making, pricing and selling honey:

• Can You Sell Homemade Honey? Rules, Permits, and How to Start: the honey rules in Wisconsin, Ohio, New York and more, from each state's own page.
• Where to Sell Honey: 7 Places That Actually Work: seven places to sell honey and what each one costs you per jar.
• How Much Should You Sell Creamed Honey For?: the half-pint price, the cost build and the premium over plain honey.
• How Much Should You Sell Hot Honey For?: the cost build and price for honey with chili in it.
• Honey Label Ideas: label ideas that name the blossom, the place and the harvest year.
• How to Price Honey, Jams, and Baked Goods at a Farm Stand: setting prices when honey shares a table with other products.

Start With Your Next Harvest

Selling honey doesn't require a business plan, a brand identity, or an e-commerce store. It requires jars, labels, and a way for customers to find you and pay you. The honey is already good; people have been telling you that for years. The regulations are simpler than you think. And the pound of honey that brought $2.45 from a packer in 2025 was listed at $15 to $20 in a 1-pound jar on four of the five apiary websites we checked.

Start with your next harvest. Label it properly. Bring it to a farmers market or tell your neighbors it's available. And when people start texting you for refills, give them a link instead of a group chat.

Ready to take honey orders without the text message chaos? Homegrown gives you a simple Homegrown storefront where customers can see what's available, order, pay, and choose pickup or local delivery, all in one link. It is $10 a month billed annually, with a 7-day trial and no charge until day 8. Set it up in 15 minutes and share it before your next harvest.