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Author Topic: How many hives?  (Read 2997 times)

Offline Johnny253

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How many hives?
« on: January 23, 2013, 12:23:08 am »
How do you know how many hives the nectar and pollen around your hives can support?

I currently have 4 hives in one location and 3 in another. I am looking to double my hives but wondering whether I should put the new ones in the same locations or elsewhere.

Offline ShaneJ

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Re: How many hives?
« Reply #1 on: January 23, 2013, 01:06:23 am »
Thats a good question. I currently have 30 hives on my property and they all seem to be doing ok.
Shane

Offline Finski

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Re: How many hives?
« Reply #2 on: January 30, 2013, 01:41:05 pm »


I currently have 4 hives in one location and 3 in another.

You can compare what is the difference between thes elocations. How much hives get honey.

Good yied depends on pastures and how far bees bring the yield.  It depends too how big are hives, have they 4 or 8 boxes.

I have found that in different places yield is easily 3 fold and even 5 fold and the distance between places is not many miles.

If bees brings nectar from distance more than 1 km, 50% of yield goes into flying.

Australia has researched quite much, what means the number of  hives in one place or in several. Results are very interesting.

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Offline Michael Bush

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Re: How many hives?
« Reply #3 on: January 30, 2013, 02:11:47 pm »
I used to be able to keep about 20 hives in a typical farm location of soybeans, alfalfa and corn without any noticable loss in production.  With "roundup-ready" crops, that number has fallen in recent years to more like 10.  The farmers are killing every weed in the fields now... in my good locations, where the farmer lets the alfalfa bloom and doesn't spray the soybeans for aphids, It's more like 30 or more.
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Offline Finski

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Re: How many hives?
« Reply #4 on: January 30, 2013, 03:08:55 pm »
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It  has been researched that if you put hives in one punch, they tend to use to fly to nearest flowers and behind  800 m on canola field pollination effect is not seen.  So researchers recommended that hives are in different sites around the field and pollination is better. And ofcourse bees get quickly full load compared to rush field.

Another thing more. In Austarlia researchers recommend one hive per 2 hectares canola. In Canada they recommend 4 hives per hectare.
Actually the latter number is for pollination F1 hybrid seeds, not for honey production.

This is a real mesh in litterature. It is better to find out your self what is a right number.

In Finland recommendation is 2 hives per hectare. So when I have 50 hectares canola, I can put there 100 hives. That is merely ridiculous.

Last summer I had 50 hectares canola and 3 hives. I got almost nothing there because did not give honey last summer.
So it is disaster to play with one card or "put eggs in same basket". 

What ever plant yield may fail because of weathers. That is why it is better to situate hives on different kind pastures.

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