Max colonies

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SixFooter

Drone Bee
Joined
Sep 16, 2009
Messages
1,875
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675
Location
Merseyside
Hive Type
National
Number of Hives
12
What's the maximum number of colonies likely to be sustainable on one site.
The site is on a farm near an orchard with semi-detahced housing estate about 1/2 mile away, a mixed wooded area nearby and loads of balsam and rosebay again about 1/2 mile away.

I ask because the site is a 2 m wide strip about 100 yds long, so I could fit very many colonies on it. Also, they have a farm shop that can sell 20 jars of honey a week!
 
Might depend on available forage post orchard blossom and pre RBW / HB. Any significant beans, clover, brambles, thistle etc in the radius for that May-July/Aug period?
 
The site would appear pretty reasonable as you describe it. If you want a number, I'll stick my neck out and say 15!

Others shoot me down if you wish! :)
 
Bang!

I wouldn't have a clue!

Rather depends on whether any are going to be moved to other crops. Personally, I wouldn't want 15 permanently on any patch such as that, but no doubt it happens. I visited Quince honey farm at the weekend and that was quite interesting. They considered maximum crop per hive, ease of labour and distance travelled costs (if fewer hives on each site).

Can't remember their optimum (as it was fairly unimportant to me as I could have all mine in one apiary!) but I think it was twenty to thirty for economy of working, but that was rather too high for max yield per colony.

I think, I would go for about 10 max.

Regards, RAB
 
I used to regularly have 40 on a OSR site.

Bottom line is to put in say ten, see what you get, if loads then try 15 the next year and play with it until you find the optimum rate.

A site really takes 5 years to assess properly.

PH
 
Around here, likely a hundred or more on an 'OSR site' would not be too many. But only for about three weeks!

Regards, RAB
 
I have between 12 and 20 on each of my two sites. Return seems to be reasonable per colony. Would it be more per colony with less numbers? I don't know but yield per comparable colony has not dropped or changed very much over the 5 or 6 years I've been building up.

Peter
 
Thanks. I've 10 there at the moment, so I'll see what happens with that number next year.
 

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