how many hives

[3pepper]

i currently have one hive and am enjoying it more than i expected , and i am planning to get more . so my question . how many hives can one location support . i have 16 acres , 3 acres mature pine trees and 10 acres of mature mixed hardwoods and 3 acres mixed orchard , blue and blackberries , peaches , muscadines , asian goumi berries , pears , and chestnuts . i have set up at the edge of the orchard with my hive just in the hardwoods ,morning sun and shade after 10 am . a friend gave me a weak hive in march and it has exploded in population , a very busy hive .

also , i saw the plans for the kenya top bar hive and i am thinking of building one , what do yaul think of it . i don't know why but it looks very interesting . i read it produces less honey than a lang. hive . how much less honey???
thanks
i love this forum

[Mike Gillmore]

A lot of beekeepers keep up to 25 hives at a single location if there is sufficient forage in the area to support them. Your bees will search well beyond your 16 acres so take a look around your property in at least a 1 mile radius to see whats out there.
In your case I would keep adding hives each year until you notice a drop or leveling out in the individual colony production.

[FordGuy]

there is a lot of speculation out there about bee forage range, and some of it is pretty fantastic (but probably accurate), but I will tell you that I'm doing fine with around 15 nucs, 7 first year hives and about 4 large hives. I've got a plan to grow my bee yard to between 40-45. I think the land around me would support more, but the overriding principle is how many can I manage. I'm sure there is pressure from crowding, but so far it has not made one iota of difference. The hive as an organism benefits from better management from me if I have other hives to compare it to, other donor hives to add brood or eggs if need be.

[FordGuy]

Actually Mr. Gilmore, some folks around here claim they will go 3 miles from the hive. What is that mathematicians, 8 thousand acres? i can't recall.

[Sundance]

As Ford and Mike have said what an area can support varies wildly. What holds true for you, will most likely not hold true a hundred miles from you (or less).

I just set out a yard with 56 colonies and when the flow is on it is not uncommon to see sets of a hundred.

Check out your forage area which is about 2 miles in radius. They seem to prefer up to 1 1/2 miles. In hard times they can travel up to 5 miles I hear.

Even a 1 miles radius is a lot of acreage. I forgot the number but it's at least 2,000 acres if memory serves me.

Good luck and go for it.

[PA Pete]

A circle with a 3 mile radius is 28.27 square miles.

28.27 square miles is 18,093 acres.

So yeah, the bees will forage a bit beyond 3pepper's 16 acres ;)

[RAlex]

3pepper...As for the kenya-top-bar-hive .I too thought that I wanted on and even built two of them. The more I thought it over and read on here I became cinvinced that a long hive would fit into plans even better because I can use regular sized deep frames in both my langs and the TBH .So I converted my ktbh`s to long hive hives.Although they are not as yet populated I plan to put a small hive into it soon....Rick

[power napper]

3pepper--When you reach the maximum number of hives the honey production of each hive will reduce and in my opinion more robbing will occur within the hives, the bees will be nastier just like you or I when we get overcrowded or we do not get enough to eat. ;)
Probably twenty five hives would be just fine.

[Michael Bush]

I think 25 is nice rule of thumb, but of course forage may only support a few or it may support a lot more. Dee Lusby has about 20 hives or so in each of her yards in the middle of the desert and they seem to produce pretty well.

If you see production starting to drop off per hive in similar conditions (not a drought) then you may have hit the maximum number of hives for your area.

[3pepper]

thanks every one ... so i don't have to worry about overpopulating with my bees . it will take me a few years to work up to 25 hives . thanks michael bush for the website . i can't quit thinking about the ktbh and long deep hives . i can expand my apiary even though i am short on cash . i have lots of scrap wood that will work nicely . what is the max length for a tbh or ktbh?
thanks again everybody . and thanks rick .i may go with the long hive so i can swap frames with my existing lang hive

[Michael Bush]

>what is the max length for a tbh or ktbh?

Brother Adam went all over the world and reported many long hives. The longest he reported was five feet. But most were closer to four. Four feet seems to be about the maximum that the bees really want to spread out. That's what all mine are.