How many hives do you have?

[giant pumpkin peep]

The people in bee chat probly get tired of me asking how many hives they have. So I will ask the site. What kind of plants are abundant in you area? How many hives do have? How much honey you get on good or bad year? Figured I stop bothering people in chat about it. Ask everyone.

[Tom G. Laury]

Divide by half. ;)

[pom51]

I now have 15 got the last one about 8 pm if the trap out works I will have 16 in about a month. not bad since I only had 5 in the spring. for the honey question I don't know should get several supers this year

[11x]

last year i got no hony cause i didnt have a hive. hehee now i have one hive and the locus trees are in full bloom

[NasalSponge]

3 hives, two nucs and a swarm. All kinds since I live in the city. Right now we have a rather large yellow sweet clover bloom going on. Just got back into beekeeping after a long break so I haven't pulled honey since the mid 90's.

[Roland]

What ever they say, divide by two. I am not as trusting as Tom......

[justin]

4 strong hives. i should probably split 2 of them, but am undecided.i am giving seious consideration to buying 47 more double deep colonies in a week. thats exciting.we have lots of things blooming at once from may thru july. it starts with apple trees, service berries, chokecherries, mock orange, and ends with knapweed and tanzy.my honey crops have been from winter die outs only so i wont brag about that.

[tecumseh]

if I knew??? then reasonable I would have enough yet.

[Ross]

About 30 producers and 10-15 cats and dogs, swarms, nucs, etc.

[The Honey Householder]

Giant Puumpkin Peep how many hives do you have.:scratch:
That's a good rule of thumb Tom. :lpf:
Well I have about 750 hives today, but just got another 104 queens in today, so it's back to another day of spliting. Hoping to be done spliting by the end of the month. Just hope my last shippment of queens doesn't get held up with the holiday.
Last years I had a 165 lbs. APH. :popcorn:
I start extracting honey when I run out of boxes.
The most honey supers produced by one hive in a season is 17. If I could only get them all to work that hard. That would be the queen to make queens from.

o/o Ron Householder

[giant pumpkin peep]

Giant Puumpkin Peep how many hives do you have.

Getting my first one in the way of a nuc wensday. Gotta deep for them to be transferred too. when needed.

[RZRBCK BEE]

Just starting. I have 3 and wanting more.

[Brenda]

1 hive and 2 traps set out. One has good prospects. Lots of bees checking it out. I may have to move the other out by that one.
I still have honey from last year, but I lost those bees over winter. I don't expect much this year, if any. The package I got were half dead bees (thanks post office). What's left are trying though.

[franktrujillo]

ya I know what you said about post office workers.. and mis-handling packages,and queen cages..I went to the post office to get my new queen and to unvail her attitude:scratch:..she slamed the package down hard. scared she killed my queen i rushed and opened it quickly.Without signing the slip.she yelled at me for opening the package before i signed..:pinch:.I scolded her by explaing to her that handle with care means no slamming I have other words for her but i keep to my self.still alive but very angry Think they have no respect for other peoples stuff..I think I'm going to complain to her supervisor...i have 2 hives now wintered over 3# package last year no honey yet...

[Brenda]

Yeah, in my case they couldn't read the print on the package that said "This Side Up!". You know the one meant to keep the syrup from leaking out and drowning half the bees?
But after seeing my brothers 2 packages, I have a plan for next year, should I order more bees. :) The two packages were held together by strips of wood in such a way that it made it less possible that they would be turned on their side.
Kudos to that bee shipper. :thumbsup:

[MapMan]

Answer to all three of your questions:

Not enough. ;)


MM

[Buzzen]

I don't have any yet. Next spring I will have 2!!

[alpha6]

ya I know what you said about post office workers.. and mis-handling packages,and queen cages..I went to the post office to get my new queen and to unvail her attitude:scratch:..she slamed the package down hard. scared she killed my queen i rushed and opened it quickly.Without signing the slip.she yelled at me for opening the package before i signed..:pinch:.I scolded her by explaing to her that handle with care means no slamming I have other words for her but i keep to my self.still alive but very angry Think they have no respect for other peoples stuff..I think I'm going to complain to her supervisor...i have 2 hives now wintered over 3# package last year no honey yet...

And after this how anyone can imagine that the Govt. could handle heath care is beyond me?? :doh:

Glad your queen was ok...should have released the tenders in her little area. :lpf:

[JohnK and Sheri]

We have between 2200-2400.
I wish we could divide that in half, then maybe we could go fishing in Canada in summer and take a real vacation in winter like we used to. Working bees in January in California is NOT a vacation, despite what John keeps trying to tell me.:D
Sheri

[bnatural]

But after seeing my brothers 2 packages, I have a plan for next year, should I order more bees.

The best plan is to increase your colonies by doing splits and raising your own queens. Then, the attitude of the transportation folks becomes a non-issue. I bought six packages last year. None this year. Now up to 10 colonies. Used the money I saved to buy more woodenware.

Bill

p.s. Maybe it has to do with being in an agricultural area (I really don't know), but the folks at my local Post Office and at the larger hub have always been great about my bees, as well as when I order day-old chicks. Still, I much prefer to interact with them on issues not involving shipped bees.

[Cacklewack]

22 hives:

9 Top bar hives
11 Warre hives
1 Langstroth hive
1 Willow tree hive

I have my hives spread across 7 sites with diverse plant life surrounding all of them.

Matt

[Natalie]

10 hives
6 langstroths
1 kerkhoff (2 queen)
3 topbar hives

[Gene Weitzel]

Somewhere north of 100 (I do cutouts almost daily so the count is constantly changing). I have 5 hive yards across three counties. Most are in areas where there are lots of clover and wildflowers in early spring and lots of Chinese Tallow trees for the main flow. I have one yard located near a bayou off the Trinity river that contains several acres of mature Tupelo trees, they were budding out 2 weeks ago so I am hoping for my first Texas Tupelo honey shortly. I hope the Tallow flow does not overlap the Tupelo.

[HAB]

20
17 LANGS
2 TOPBAR
1 OBSERVATION

12 NUCS (2 CURRENTLY OCCUPIED)
8 SWARM TRAPS (scattered over my 135 acres surrounding my hives)

[Keith Jarrett]

Answer to all three of your questions:

Not enough. ;)


MM

Well MM, I have 2200 too many. :)

PS. Now sheri......

[Trevor Mansell]

1300 ,wich seems like more than a full time job.

[turboterry544]

10 and trying to get to 50 by next year maybe more??:thumbsup:

[Terry Small, Jr]

2 at home. They are quite literally 'at home', I live in a mobile home on a ranch in Valley Center, CA. The colonies are at the hitch on the front of the trailer. Both were swarms that settled into empty nucs stored outside the honey house where I work, also in Valley Center. They are as docile as they are productive. Neither is strong enough to have been supered yet, that might change tomorrow for the older one, but they have been bringing in impressive amounts of honey & pollen for their size. They have both been growing rapidly. Valley Center is primarily citrus & avocado, but I also have strawberries, persimmon, lavender, pomegranate and who can count what else nearby.

At work (Farmer Bees), my boss said that after our next round of splits we should be around 4000.

[USCBeeMan]

Started year with 4.

Ordered 4 packages and 1 5-frame nuc.
Made 3 or 4 splits.
Have no idea anymore how many swarms I captured.
4 cutouts. Only sure that I got the queen on 1 of the cutout.
1 log from a tree with a hive on top.
1 vacuum of a queenless swarm.
3 trapouts.

Lost 3 of 4 ordered packages.
Lost 1 of original four hives. (From same guy I purchased & lost 3 packages this year.)
Lost 1 split, my fault.
Had some swarms abscond.
Lost a couple of swarms to SHB and wax moths.
Had 1 swarm that was busting to the seams in a 5-frame nuc that just left. Gone!! Just a few brood cells left with a couple of them having bees trying to emerge when they died. May have left because I didn't get a 10-frame box on it soon enough.

So my total at the moment is 26 colonies including a couple of nucs and 3 trapouts. I also work my neighbor's hive who is a beek that gave it up.

1 of the trapouts has a laying queen the other 2 have had queens emerge but haven't seen the queens come back and start laying yet.

Also have 2 colonies that I just put out that are queenless from a cutout and vacuuming bees from a tree that I am sure were queenless. Not counted in the 26.

Will probably try combine them with the other 2 nucs or purchase 2 queens.

As a 2nd year beek, I have really jumped in this head first. Not my intention but it happened. Really learning a lot and my costs have skyrocketed for beeware and sugar (close to 50# a week). Have made as many boxes as possible (rabbit jointed) and modified some BBs to SBBs or 8-frame SBBs that were given to me by a beek that has quit.

Thing is I have 2 more cutouts to schedule, 1 dead tree to cut down for the bees and have requests for at least 3 more trapouts. May have to put off 1 or 2 of the trapouts until next spring.

[NasalSponge]

3 hives, two nucs and a swarm. All kinds since I live in the city. Right now we have a rather large yellow sweet clover bloom going on. Just got back into beekeeping after a long break so I haven't pulled honey since the mid 90's.


Swelled to 5 back down to 4...nasty queen!

Hey USC...My sis lives in Smyrna...Been there once to the Civil war stuff.

[AR Beekeeper]

It looks like I will go into winter with 40, I have been trying to reduce to 24 for 2 years now!

[irwin harlton]

too many when it comes time to feed and move and wrap for winter .... not enough when I count the drums.....9 hives in the back yard, breeding stock or as the wife calls them " my pets"....... sometimes enthralled by watching them work..........sometimes get the feeling I am very close to nature and God herself....... amazing little bugs

[giant pumpkin peep]

wow this thing was brought back from many pages back...cool!

[chillardbee]

120+ right now. All double broodnest. all requeened from a black beauty carniolan mama. I'll be getting ready this winter to split to 150+ in the spring

[StevenG]

I took a risk and made some splits Aug. 1, now have 14. Splits will be ready for second brood box next Saturday... Plan to split in the spring, buy two nucs, and expand up to 30 hives next spring. Trying to plan for what appears to be a good clover honey crop next year, with all the rain we've had this year. My spring splits were late this year due to late arrival of the queens... It looks like I'll only get 5 med. depth supers of honey. :-( oh well, there's always next year!

Now, if you plan to divide my count by 2, I have 28 hives! :lpf:

[franktrujillo]

I have 3 strong hives and one observation hive.4 natural combs deep tried to do 3 but bees measure better than me i guess.I'm going to try to winter them over in it....:ot:it's been great watching bees hatch,dancing,etc.....
used 4'L x 42"w my next one is going to be modified alot thought of new ideas to improve the design.Removed two hives from buildings gave one to brother-in-law.So you know how many he has too..:D