How many hives hits the "sweet-spot"?

[user 20297]

Although only just over two years in, I've gone from one colony to ten. Seven of these are mature and producing this season. Three are building up from swarms, and I have a tiny colony in a mini-plus, which effectively is my "emergency" queen.

Ten is just about manageable, despite taking over my life and reducing all other hobbies to obstacles to beekeeping, rather than something I can enjoy properly.

Five full colonies sounds about right to me for optimum pleasure and productivity, although I have the opposite situation of some people in that my partner would push me to have even more hives. How many do you find comfortable as a hobby beekeeper?

 

[Wilco]

Although only just over two years in, I've gone from one colony to ten. Seven of these are mature and producing this season. Three are building up from swarms, and I have a tiny colony in a mini-plus, which effectively is my "emergency" queen.

Ten is just about manageable, despite taking over my life and reducing all other hobbies to obstacles to beekeeping, rather than something I can enjoy properly.

Five full colonies sounds about right to me for optimum pleasure and productivity, although I have the opposite situation of some people in that my partner would push me to have even more hives. How many do you find comfortable as a hobby beekeeper?

Depends on your aim. If honey, a couple would be fine, if breeding you need more. I'm down to 15 now plus client ones, after a few merges and due to them being spread around it's tight to get round them in a day given I'm limited by the school run.

 

[Newbeeneil]

I agree with Wilco. It depends why you do it and the time you have to spend on your hobby.
I love playing with bees as I find them fasinating, I struggle with the honey as it's hard work to extract and jar but love supplying to locals and local shops.
After my initial meteoric rise from 1 hive to 20+ in my first 3 years I was asked to look after hives for a commercial enterprise so then got more hives to supply them, then got more customers who wanted hives and so it goes on as I need more hives as back up for the hives my customers have!!!!
My retirement hobby has turned into a small business that I just love.
But being retired..... I have the time

 

[enrico]

I like an average of 5. More for room than any other reason.

 

[TomH]

I very nearly started a thread on this exact subject the other day!

Ten is just about manageable, despite taking over my life and reducing all other hobbies to obstacles to beekeeping, rather than something I can enjoy properly.

I'm in pretty much exactly the same position as you. Toying with the idea of making up a decent number of splits and really going for it next year. I love it. But it is SO time consuming, from the inspections, workshop time, random swarm calls, extraction etc. I'm lucky to be self employed so reasonably flexible and able to fit bees in where needed. Oh, and a very tolerant bee widow

Would be interesting to hear from the more semi commerical/commerical people on here as well. How do you manage when you have 10s of hives? Split inspections over multiple days, do have another job, etc, what does your typical beekeeping week look like?

 

[blackcloud]

The formula is the no.of hives plus a fully kitted empty one.
Which soon gets occupied....
With wretched swarm collections I'm currently at over 20 -aiming to cull to five by autumn.

 

[elainemary]

I have 12 plus Nucs which is my limit / optimum. I choose to spread them across several apiaries as I learn so much more this way, get a wider variety of honey and can spread my beekeeping over a few sessions rather than one mega one. I like to have around 3-4 per apiary to enable good comparisons and to have a ‘support’ colony per apiary (which I used to produce more combs than honey)

Usually around 8 of these are good producers, as there are always ‘problem’ hives or those that are building up for various reasons.

More would be a head ache, needing more space for kit, but less would mean reduced choice for queen rearing and drone producers.

 

[enrico]

I very nearly started a thread on this exact subject the other day!


I'm in pretty much exactly the same position as you. Toying with the idea of making up a decent number of splits and really going for it next year. I love it. But it is SO time consuming, from the inspections, workshop time, random swarm calls, extraction etc. I'm lucky to be self employed so reasonably flexible and able to fit bees in where needed. Oh, and a very tolerant bee widow

Would be interesting to hear from the more semi commerical/commerical people on here as well. How do you manage when you have 10s of hives? Split inspections over multiple days, do have another job, etc, what does your typical beekeeping week look like?

They don't tend to do full inspections in my experience. The one I visited many years ago ran all his hives on double brood and would simply lift one side of the top brood box. If there were queen cells at the bottom of the top box he would do the necessary otherwise he would just drop the box back into position and leave it alone.

 

[user 3509]

We have 13 spread over 3 apiary sites. Retirement means that we have the time to deal with them but at times I feel that they are taking over our lives, and that is before we start extracting, jarring and selling the honey locally!!

 

[pargyle]

I've got 8 in the garden, I still work full time and I think that's about the sensible limit, the kit is mostly all paid for by the time you get to this stage and apart from consumables, repairs and replacements my investment is mostly in my time ...most years now I cover my costs and make a little from what I view as a hobby. I haven't the space for any more than a few Nucs on a separate stand and I haven't the time to bother with an out apiary ... so, in my case, I think 8 is about as good as it gets !

 

[Amari]

It also depends how easy it is to sell the honey. Until last year I had three retail outlets as well as my sales box on the grass verge outside our house. Then the obligation of supplying the outlets regularly began to pale so now it's just the sales box. Happily SteveG on here took over the commercial outlets!
The other major reason for reducing output was the scourge of extracting scores of combs in a small kitchen.

 

[Amari]

I've got 8 in the garden, I still work full time and I think that's about the sensible limit, the kit is mostly all paid for by the time you get to this stage and apart from consumables, repairs and replacements my investment is mostly in my time ...most years now I cover my costs and make a little from what I view as a hobby. I haven't the space for any more than a few Nucs on a separate stand and I haven't the time to bother with an out apiary ... so, in my case, I think 8 is about as good as it gets !

Working full time, being a moderator, keeping eight colonies! You're a hero!

 

[thorn]

Bee buddy and I have twenty over five sites. We hit three apiaries on one morning of the week and two on another. It's up from ten last year. We had been hoping to drop the most distant site this year, but it was doing too well in the spring.
Twenty's fine unless we hit a problem and get stuck at one apiary. Then we have to work into the afternoon. We've decided to cut back to ten next year.

 

[jeff33]

I struggle to juggle a F/T job and 25 hives over 3 apiaries. I wanted to stick to 20 this year but that didn't happen and now have 7 nucs which I want to bring through the winter to use for queen rearing and production next year. I will probably be heartless in the autumn or spring with some culling.

It's a lot of work, probably 2.5 days a week if you include travel to sites, popping additionally to an apiary because something needs to be done urgently, or when queen rearing.

Also up to my eyeballs with extracting, jarring and putting supers back. I supply 3 outlets and sell at the gate. Frankly, not much time for anything else!!

 

[bobba]

I would go for as many as you can get away with in one location, or that you can comfortably manage in a single visit. That way you will be making good efficient use of the time you spend keeping.

If you can keep a few hives in your garden that's ideal in my opinion. But if you have to drive to your site then I would want at least 6-12 to make it worthwhile. Obviously it all depends how much time and help you have.

But I would roll with 10 again next year, hopefuly you will become more proficient and things will get easier anyway.

 

[Nannysbees]

Four is more than enough for us at the bottom of the garden, two was my limit really but that jumped to 4 last year. Definitely not going to have anymore, saying that I have a nuc which I'm hoping to reunite. Was hoping that one of the hives would be weak or q- but the dilemma is all four are doing really well

 

[user 20297]

I would go for as many as you can get away with in one location, or that you can comfortably manage in a single visit. That way you will be making good efficient use of the time you spend keeping.

If you can keep a few hives in your garden that's ideal in my opinion. But if you have to drive to your site then I would want at least 6-12 to make it worthwhile. Obviously it all depends how much time and help you have.

But I would roll with 10 again next year, hopefuly you will become more proficient and things will get easier anyway.

That all makes sense, and the last bit is exactly what SWMBO said.

 

[JamezF]

Four is more than enough for us at the bottom of the garden, two was my limit really but that jumped to 4 last year. Definitely not going to have anymore, saying that I have a nuc which I'm hoping to reunite. Was hoping that one of the hives would be weak or q- but the dilemma is all four are doing really well

And so it begins....

James

 

[elainemary]

They don't tend to do full inspections in my experience. The one I visited many years ago ran all his hives on double brood and would simply lift one side of the top brood box. If there were queen cells at the bottom of the top box he would do the necessary otherwise he would just drop the box back into position and leave it alone.

Having read about doing this I’ve done the same this year. It saves a lot of time and seems to work well ie I haven’t missed any cells - just inspect if there’s any evidence of cells between boxes or in the top one. Also a good technique ifbthe colony is slightly stingy, as the stingers tend to be the flyers who are in the bottom box

 

[Erichalfbee]

I've had thirteen this year. Too many
SIX. I must get this down to six.