How much space per hive in bee yard?

[Heritage]

I was just wondering what some of you experts were doing as far as spacing TBH's in the bee yard. How far apart should they be? I've only got two hives about 3-4 feet apart (just enough space to comfortably work between them without worrying about bumping into the next hive. Should they be spaced further apart? Is there an optimun distance?

Is there any practical way to determine how many colonies an area can support? We don't have any large farms growing much of anything except corn and fescue for hay. I would like to multiply my bee yard, but don't want to have too many bees for the area. Can anyone help me out? Thanks.

[Michael Bush]

I have all my hives rather crowded because I hate to steal grass from the horses. But my criteria would be mostly from the point of view of working them. You need a couple of feet between them to be able to work them. You could run them all long ways in a row and work them all from the sides. Or you could run the the other way with two feet or more between them. Some of it is how much room you have to spare and some of it is room to work and some of it is ease of mowing if you want to mow around them. The bees won't care. Most areas unless they are very arid, will support around 25 fill sized hives. I'd work my way up slowly. When you reach a point where more hives does not produce more honey you have too many hives there.

[Scot Mc Pherson]

I agree with michael on almost all points except the number of hives. I think 50 hives per location is generally a good mean number of hives. I start a yard off with 20 hives now, and split from them to increase yard size. Though this might be changing, and also of course I am speaking of South West florida were there is just as much feral versions of local flora as there are of cultivated agricultural versions of the same plants and trees (citrus/palms) which are our principle flows plus clover after citrus is over. The rest of the year is mostly wild flower unless you have a place with isolated canopies of sea grapes or mangroves which will produce very special honeys. I think the most accepted number of MAX hives per yard is 100, but I think that's pushing it and 50 is probably and practically a better number. I can work 50 TBHs hives in a day if I push hard, start early and nothing goes wrong, and so that's one trip to a yard. Right now I am working with 20-hive yards, plus 5 at home and 3 at a friend's house.