Beekeeper Resume Examples & Writing Guide

This is a resume for an apiary manager with nine years in commercial beekeeping. The name and the operations are invented. Look at what sits in the top third: colony count, winter losses, pollination contracts and the license class. Those four lines are what a commercial operator wants to know before anything else.

Beekeeping hiring is small and word of mouth carries a lot, so your resume mostly has to prove you will not cost the owner colonies. Four things do that.

• Colony numbers you personally worked, not the size of the company. "Managed 2,400 hives" and "worked at a 2,400-hive outfit" are read very differently. Say which one is true.
• Winter loss percentage. This is the single number that separates a beekeeper from someone who owns bee equipment. If yours was bad one year, give the range and the reason.
• How you handle varroa. Naming your monitoring method and threshold tells an experienced operator more about you than any certificate. Alcohol wash counts, sugar roll counts, and a stated treatment threshold read as competence.
• Driving and equipment. Migratory outfits move bees at night on semis. A Class A license, forklift certification and a clean driving record can matter as much as your bee knowledge.

Group them so someone can skim. Bee biology and colony work first, then equipment and driving, then the business side if the job involves selling.

• Colony work: inspection and brood assessment, queen finding and marking, requeening, splits and combines, swarm control, feeding programs, wintering preparation
• Health: varroa monitoring by alcohol wash and sugar roll, treatment rotation, nosema and tracheal mite awareness, American and European foulbrood recognition, small hive beetle and wax moth control
• Breeding: grafting, cell builders, mating nucs, instrumental insemination if you have it, stock selection for hygienic behavior
• Production: extraction, uncapping, filtering, bottling, moisture testing with a refractometer, wax rendering, creamed honey, comb honey
• Equipment: frame building and wiring, box assembly and painting, forklift, boom truck, flatbed loading and strapping, hive netting
• Compliance and records: state apiary registration, interstate health certificates, pesticide label reading, HiveTracks or spreadsheet yard records, food safety for honey packing
• Physical and seasonal: night loading, 12-hour summer days in full suit, lifting deeps repeatedly, travel for pollination

There is no single national beekeeping license in the US. What exists is a patchwork of state rules and voluntary certification, so name the state and the year for anything you list.

• State apiary registration. Many states require you to register hives with the department of agriculture, sometimes annually, and to get an inspection or health certificate before moving colonies across state lines. Check your own state, because the rule and the fee differ.
• Master beekeeper programs. Several universities and regional associations run tiered certification with written and practical exams. The Eastern Apicultural Society and the University of Florida programs are among the better known. State associations often run apprentice, journeyman and master levels.
• Driving. A commercial driver license, usually Class A, is what lets you haul bees for a migratory outfit. List the class, endorsements and the state.
• Equipment and safety. Forklift or powered industrial truck certification, OSHA 10-Hour, and first aid and CPR are all worth a line, especially with anaphylaxis risk on a crew.
• Food handling. If you bottle and sell, note your state's cottage food rules or any food safety training you have done for the packing side.

Backyard beekeeping is real experience, but only if you present it as work. Ten hives you have kept alive for six years is a better credential than a weekend course.

1. 1Put your own colonies on the resume as an operation with a name, dates and a colony count. Say what your winter losses have been, year by year if they were good.
2. 2Add the things a commercial crew does that you have also done: splits, requeening, extraction, feeding, mite washes. Give numbers even when they are small.
3. 3Say what you can lift and how long you can work. Commercial bee work is heavy, hot and fast, and the biggest reason new hires quit is that nobody warned them.
4. 4Get a forklift certification and first aid before you apply. Both are cheap and both remove an obstacle.
5. 5Volunteer or work one season for a commercial outfit, even part time. One paid season on a real crew changes how every later application reads.
6. 6Join your state or county beekeeping association and say so. It signals you will keep learning and it is where the jobs get mentioned.

One page. Commercial beekeeping outfits are small businesses, often family-run, and the owner is reading your resume on a phone between yards. Plain layout, no photo, no graphics, no date of birth. Send a PDF and also paste the text into the email body, because a lot of these jobs are filled straight from an email.

• Put colony counts and locations next to each employer, not buried in bullets.
• Be honest about seasonality. "Apr to Nov, 2023 and 2024 seasons" is normal in this industry and looks better than a hidden gap.
• If you are applying to a large packer or a research station, they may use an applicant tracking system. Mirror their words: apiary, colony, varroa, pollination, extraction, queen rearing, migratory.
• Add a line about references from previous operators. In a small industry, a named referee who will pick up the phone is worth more than a certificate.
• Mention whether you have a bee sting allergy history and carry an epinephrine auto-injector only if you choose to; you are not required to disclose it, but a crew lead will want to know before your first day in a yard.

“The first thing I look for is a winter loss number. Anybody can say they love bees. If someone tells me they held losses at twelve percent on two thousand hives and then tells me how they monitor mites, I will find work for them even if I was not hiring.”