Our association has a collective arrangement when taking bees to the heather so we only pay for the number of hives a member takes to the heather The problem is that the crop is totally unpredictable - 2024 was a good year but there have been years (such as 2018) where the heather produced nothing and some colonies actually starved. It's a short lived crop and you need big colonies to take advantage of it, usually people combine to have double brood or very full brood boxes. Then there's the hassle of getting them there, bringing them back and processing heather honey - cut comb seems popular but you will need a press if you are going to extract it as it's thixotropic. With only three hives I rather doubt that the effort required is worth the reward and the risk ... I've never bothered.
