You borrow bees for the first two years, then you keep them.

There are a lot of new beekeepers in recent years, and this is great. In eastern Nebraska I personally know of approximately 100 beekeepers who started in the last three years! Most of what I do with beekeeping is mentoring of these new beekeepers and I would feel lost without newbees asking me questions.

These new beekeepers all start with one or two hives but beyond that there is a lot of variation. Some of them don't enjoy or don't have the time to enjoy working the hives so not much happens other than installing the package and harvesting honey. Some open the hive every week to do their best to (attempt to) help the bees out. Unfortunately though, no matter what type of beekeeper they want to be, I would say 4 out of 5 of these newbees don't last.

Small scale beekeeping is difficult to get hard numbers on because simply knowing your neighbor has bees brings about unwanted trouble in many situations even though there is no actual harm or danger. Additionally many areas have laws which forbid beekeeping or regulate it so strictly that the beekeeper chooses not to follow the overly stringent requirements. This encourages beekeepers to remain silent in many situations and most are warned not to register their hives unless absolutely necessary.

Given that difficulty there aren't reliable numbers but I do have some observations that are interesting: 3 out of 5 new beekeepers only last a single year. 4 out of 5 new beekeepers only last two years. Why? Beekeeping is not easy. Honeybees do their best to create at least one new hive every year by swarming and there seems to be good reason for this, an established hive has a hard time lasting without serious and careful beekeeper intervention.

Before 1990 a beekeeper could put bees in a box and just check back when they wanted to take some honey out. There were few complications but in general the bees would thrive with little intervention. In 1987 Varroa destructor was introduced to the USA. I believe this mite to be the cause of or a contributing factor to every beehive collapse today.

Varroa destructor is the reason why everyone seems to know someone who used to be a beekeeper. It is also the reason you aren't really a beekeeper until your third year.