How close can multiple hives be?

[Rosalind]

I want to start beekeeping next spring. I was planning on getting my early-spring plants established this year so they'll flower next spring, I want my bees to be plenty well-fed on witch hazels and hellebores. Planted some last weekend, will plant more by June.

Well, this year a neighbor about 3/4 mile down the road also decided to get three big hives to pollinate the farm preserve land, which includes many fruit trees. However, because neighbor is not the sharpest tool in the shed, he has not maintained these trees at all in any way whatsoever. The trees are all falling apart and dying from fungus and whatnot. Also, even if they were all alive and in good condition, you'd maybe need one or two hives at most to pollinate all of them--there's maybe 50 trees, total, spread out over 25 acres. The only other food on the farm preserve land for bees is clover, as the rest of it is used for hay and pasture. The cows eat most of the wildflowers. So now the bees are showing up in everyone's flower garden and bringing their friends.

My question is, will four hives be too many too close together? We've also got a few colonies of native bumblebees around, and I don't want them to starve either. I have plenty of flowers to go around later in the season, but early on they are going to be competing for three witch hazels and six hellebores. There's not much I can do to get more food for them, as I've sort of spent my limit on plants this year. I can start more hellebore seedlings, but...

 

[Ridgerunner]

You should have a honeybee club around that would be glad to talk to you. Your county extension agent can put you in touch with them.

Bees are usually regulated. In Arkansas you cannot buy or sell a hive of bees without a permit and you have to get agreement of any other hive operator within 2 or 3 miles in some cases. It also helps for operators in the same to do some of the mite treatment at the same time. There are federal regulations also. There are diseases amd pests that need to be controlled. I'd strongly advise checking into it.

As far as feeding bees early in the spring, you can use sugar water. Your local bee club can explain how.

 

[curly_kate]

What is the purpose of regulating beekeeping (other than collecting fees, probably)? We live in southeastern Indiana, and my husband and a bunch of others down here keep bees. I looked up online, and it looks like our only regulations are on importing bees and reporting incidents of mites and other pathogens in a hive. DH has met the woman "in charge" of beekeepers in Indiana, and it seems that most of what the state wants is voluntary at this point.

 

[Rosalind]

That's why I was asking, really--the state regulations don't say anything about that. The state regulation is about four pages that say they will inspect my bees every year (they already inspect the chickens), the hive must be easily inspected (no old-fashioned skep-style hives), and if I've got any old unoccupied hives laying around, they must be kept in the basement or somewhere that robber bees can't set up housekeeping. If they find cooties in the hive during their annual inspection, they can order me to use medication to deal with it. Also, I must write my name on the hive so they know it's mine. And then there's a long section about interstate transport which will not be my problem since I'm going to buy from a local apiary.

There are a couple of beekeeping clubs around here that run "bee school," but the timing is not good for me, I can't make it at all. Either it's during the day when I'm at work or it's on a particular evening when DH is working and there'll be no one to manage the dogs.

Been lurking a lot on the Beemaster's International forum and reading as much as I can. I'm sure I'll make a lot of mistakes, though, good thing I don't mind bee stings.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I went to a bee school here a few months back. One of the sections was on rules and regulations. I don't plan to keep bees but wanted to learn a bit about them.

Some of what Arkansas does is voluntary. For example, they don't inspect your bees unless they are invited. Some is required, such as setting up a hive within 2 or 3 (can't remember which) miles of a registered apiary without that owner's permission unless it is on your own land. You cannot import bees from out of state without them being inspected. I can't remember if that is true of buying bees in state or not, but I believe it is. My memory is not what it should be. They did mention that each states laws are different.

Why are they regulating bees? It is not just to collect fees, though when they regulate something they often try to recover enough money from what they are regulating so they don't have to tap us general taxpayers to pay for it.

An example. A few years back someone applied for a permit to transport bees through Arkansas from a state to our south to a state to our north. The permit was denied because the bees had not been inspected. That person transported the bees anyway and had a traffic incident in which a hive of bees escaped. Many hives in this area are now infected with a mite that was previously not in our area. There are bee diseases and parasites that are not worldwide yet. It would be nice to keep it that way.

The intent of the regulations is to protect the bee population so our crops can be pollinated and bee owners don't have their bees wiped out by something preventable. Another example. If Joe Beesting has foulbrood in his apiary, that apiary is probably required to be sanitized. If the surrounding apiaries are registered, then the Ag Department can notify them that foulbrood is in the area and would probably require that they be tested immediately. If they can act fast enough to contain the outbreak of foulbrood, a lot of hives may not have to be destroyed. If they cannot find all the surrounding apiaries and test them, foulbrood may continue to be spread. Obviously the system is not perfect. Wild hives are not registered. Foulbrood might not be the right example, but it is the disease I can think of right now. As I said, my memory....

I'm personally not opposed to regulation as such. I don't like it when they go overboard and sometimes regulations are not well thought out. The actual result is often not what the intent was or they totally forget some aspects of what they are regulating.

I hope this explains where my comments were coming from.

 

[Rosalind]

Ridgerunner, that makes a lot of sense. I absolutely understand what you are saying. I was just wondering because around here there don't seem to be any laws regarding how close they can be kept, and the books and articles I've read are all focused mostly on things like how to build a hive, what flowers to plant in the garden, weather conditions, use of a queen excluder, etc. Just the straight-up mechanics of it. I found a couple of articles that said if you ensure that there are nectar-bearing plants nearby that flower in very early spring, the bees will get out and about earlier, so I thought I'd do that. But when it came to how many hives you can put in one area, the statements were very vague, and one article even said it didn't matter, they'd find food one way or the other. Don't think I quite believe that, as it goes against, you know, all of ecology--they're not going to hang around my hive if there isn't enough food for them, they'll bugger off for greener (or more flowery) pastures. But hey, it could be true.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I'm certainly not an expert. That's why I suggest the local beekeepers club. Here, they said part of what they do is mentor new people and show them existing operations.

I believe some beekeepers feed their hives in the spring when they are waking up to help the hive recover from the winter. The number of bees really drops over the winter and they need to recover the numbers.

I have seen photos of a lot of hives together, but I'm with you in that it seems there have to be limits on how much food is available. Maybe the hives self-regulate according to available food. There probably are a lot of flowers available early that we don't realize. I know the pollen count goes up very high in the early spring here, probably because of certain trees. I'd imagine Mother Nature has it worked out.

Best of luck to you in this endevour. And good luck on not getting stung.

 

[Rusty]

My question is, will four hives be too many too close together? We've also got a few colonies of native bumblebees around, and I don't want them to starve either. I have plenty of flowers to go around later in the season, but early on they are going to be competing for three witch hazels and six hellebores. There's not much I can do to get more food for them, as I've sort of spent my limit on plants this year. I can start more hellebore seedlings, but...

When I had hives in our commercial grove in Florida, we kept them in groups of 10 and planned 10 hives per acre of trees for pollination. At the end of the citrus season we moved them to the palmetto scrub. Moving hives from bee pasture to bee pasture in your area throughout the season is a common beekeeping practice. Most good books on beekeeping will tell you about out-yard practices--finding them, maintaining them, when to move, etc. This is also why it is a good idea to know your local beekeepers--so that everybody doesn't settle in the same areas and ignore other good areas that will support multiple hives. Your state inspector can be invaluable in this regard, as well.

HTH


Rusty

 

[blue skys]

You should have a honeybee club around that would be glad to talk to you. Your county extension agent can put you in touch with them.

Bees are usually regulated. In Arkansas you cannot buy or sell a hive of bees without a permit and you have to get agreement of any other hive operator within 2 or 3 miles in some cases. It also helps for operators in the same to do some of the mite treatment at the same time. There are federal regulations also. There are diseases amd pests that need to be controlled. I'd strongly advise checking into it.

As far as feeding bees early in the spring, you can use sugar water. Your local bee club can explain how.

I thought of this the other day, when I walked out my front door and saw bee butts sticking out of the holes on the humming-bird feeder. I thought it was too cute!! :bee

 

[Reinbeau]

Four hives isn't going to be too many in one area.

I find it hard to believe there are no other trees around - is that true? Remember, honeybees will go out 2.5 to three miles around (although if the nectar sources are closer, of course, they don't have to travel that far). You're here in MA, the spring flow starts with the red maples and continues, just now the fruit trees are blossoming. I wouldn't worry about it at all. As for moving hives, I'm of the opinion that this is how many diseases are spread - plus the stress it puts on the bees. For a home apiary I wouldn't worry a bit about moving them.

We usually have four hives out back, and there are many other beekeepers in our area. We have two at my mother's and there's another apiary within a mile of her that has up to 50 hives during the summer. You really can't control how many hives there are around you.