Number of Hives per Acre

[Beacon Woods]

My husband and I are in the planning stages of a U-pick berry farm. We will (hopefully) have 2 acres of strawberries, 3 acres of blueberries, 3 acres of various raspberries and 1 acre of sour cherry tress. Add to all that a bunch of bees. How many hives do we need for proper pollination?

[peggjam]

5-10 for all of it.

[Craig W.]

Beacon I wish you luck on the farm. I do the same thing have been for a few years now. If you have any questions feel free to email me I will try my best. I do have a few years experience that might help, or not.

[tarheit]

General rule of thumb is 1 hive per acre. However in practice this can vary from .5-3 per acre depending on weather, what other flowers are blooming at the same time (distracting them from what you want them to work on), and the strength of your hives. And of course all your crops are not blooming at the same time so you don't need as many hives as if they were flowering at the same time.

peggjam probably has it right, 5-10 to take into account distractions, not all hives coming though the winter strong (or alive), etc. You can always adjust if you find it's not enough.

-Tim

[DennisT]

Don't let anyone leave the farm before a sample of your honey.

[Finman]

If you keep bees 5-10 hives are minimum to keep even if you do not have berry yeard.

Your berries does not need so much bees. But like Dennis says honey is good to sell with berries.

The flowering times of your berries are short. Only rasberry gives a lot of honey.

But 5 big hives or 10 tiny hives is good measure for one site of bees. You should to get 100 -150 lbs honey from one hive. If not, beepastures are not good. It depends how much you have bees on your area now.

[Grant]

Is your question how many hives (minimum) do you need to pollinate that many acres of berries,

or

Is your question about how many hives (maximum) these acres will support?

Personally, I'd go with as many hives as your time and energy will allow. Obviously they will find lots of other flowers in and out of berry season to forage.

I have six hives on someone elses 3-acre blue berry farm. Honey was light, mild and in great abundance this spring (two supers per hive).

Grant
Jackson, MO

[Beacon Woods]

Thanks everyone!

For clarification - I guess my question was really two-fold. How many hives do I need as a minimum to pollinate these 9ish acres of berries and how many hives (maximum) can I have on them. We own about 21 acres with about 9 being wooded, 9 being flat and rolling fields and 2-3 in a pond. The neighbors across the road have about 5 acres of an old (>30 years) apple orchard. We are surrounded by horse farms, corn and soybeans.

There are three hives on the farm now getting about 100-150 pounds of honey a piece.

Once again, thanks for your wisdom and help!

[ScadsOBees]

Maximum? That depends on how many you want. You could probably have almost as many as you want, up to a hundred or more. They can travel miles if they need to for forage.

[Beacon Woods]

Well a hundred sounds a little ambitious to me right now. I was thinking 20-30 or so.

[carbide]

Be careful not to build up too many hives too quickly. By this I mean that some locations can accommodate less hives than other locations. It may be possible to have 100 hives in some locations, whereas in other locations 20 hives will be hard pressed to provide enough surplus honey for you to get your share. smile.gif

If you suddenly plop 30 hives down in one spot you may find that there is not enough to go around and your hives are robbing each other in a dearth. We had no black locust bloom this Spring and the 18 hives that I have in my yard built up from winter OK but they produced little to no surplus honey. I figure that if I had 30 hives or so here in this yard they would have robbed each other severely.

[ScadsOBees]

>>>Well a hundred sounds a little ambitious to me right now. I was thinking 20-30 or so.

I figured as much, but threw that out anyway. They can travel up to 7 miles, but more likely wouldn't go farther than 1 or 2. A 2 mile radius from the center of your property would give them roughly(!) 16 sq miles to forage. Even being very conservative, they will forage within a half mile radius, and that is roughly(!) 640 acres from the hive.

Disclaimer: All math was done in my head quickly. I didn't use pi nor am I eating any pie.

-rick

[ScadsOBees]

>>>Well a hundred sounds a little ambitious to me right now. I was thinking 20-30 or so.

I figured as much, but threw that out anyway. They can travel up to 7 miles, but more likely wouldn't go farther than 1 or 2. A 2 mile radius from the center of your property would give them roughly(!) 16 sq miles to forage. Even being very conservative, they will forage within a half mile radius, and that is roughly(!) 640 acres from the hive.

Disclaimer: All math was done in my head quickly. I didn't use pi nor am I eating any pie.

-rick

[kc in wv]

Just a thought. Since you have ground around your berries and some waste areas plant a nectar plant to assist the bee's. Just make sure your clients wear shoes during the cover crop bloom or mow before the weekends so that the the bloom is reduced.

[Michael Bush]

Area is Pi * R squared. Which is 3.14 * 7 miles * 7 miles = 153.86 square miles * 640 acres per square mile = 98,470 acres. 3.14 * 2 miles * 2 miles * 640 acres = 8,038 acres.