To this point I have kept my bees on my own property but, this year I think I will need to find somewhere for about fifty or so hives. My question is what do most of you do to compensate the land owner for this. I know most give honey, I think but, how much and do any of you pay money? Also do you leave your bees there year round or move them to your home yard in the winter? Thank you.
I compensate them based on the year we had. If it's a good year, it's a lot of honey. If it's a bad year there may not be any honey. Most of them don't do it for the honey, and if they do, you probably should find somewhere else where the bees will be appreciated for themselves.
I haven't been doing it that long but I offer 1/4 of 1 hive. I average out the hives and gladly give it packaged how they want it not smaller than 1#. I totally concur with the good Mr Bush if they don't understand that it is an agricultural pursuit and the yield may vary greatly you may want to look elsewhere.
I have recently contacted several people in Colorado with large alfalfa operations and they generally just think it's neat and would love some free honey from their land.
I have someone who lives bout 15 miles away contacted me about buying some bees. They have some fruit trees on their property an are interested in keeping bees for pollination and honey. They also live in the middle of the woods of the beaten path so it should be a good area for honey trees. Since I really don't want to sell to any bees, as I will be expanding and have been looking for a good outyard, I suggested that they let me place up to twenty hives on their property. I also told them that they could help me through the coming year when I come to work the bees so they can learn about them. After a year if they still want to keep bees I will let them have a few colonies to work on as their own as long as I can still keep some colonies there. We have already agreed to the terms and I will be moving a few drone colonies there near the end of the month. Some four frame nucs with some queen cells will be taken there soon thereafter. After I offered so kindly to do this for them they became very excited and can't wait for me to start bringing the bees.
I think it is imperative that you have insurance on those out-yards. I have Farm Family Casualty - Special Farm Package. I joined the Farm Bureau and then got this insurance. I have all my out-yards identified in my policy. There are a number of threads on this topic if you do a search.
...My question is what do most of you do to compensate the land owner for this. I know most give honey, I think but, how much and do any of you pay money? Also do you leave your bees there year round or move them to your home yard in the winter? Thank you.
Beekeepers, tend to be in the habit of undervaluing the worth of their bees.
IMO the landowner is justly compensated for the pollination provided.
If the land owner fails to see the benefit of having bees on their property, this is probably a good indication one should look else ware.
Honey to the landowner is a good gesture, and I simply let the landowner request honey when they need it, which ends up being much less costly to the me than a set amount given, I state up front that I will gladly provide free honey to them, with the success of the year dictating how much I can afford to provide (allow for flexibility).
Every decision I make in beekeeping, from building equipment, colony management decisions as well as outyard locations are based on maintaining maximum flexibility and options for myself.
Consider, that your plans to find a location to place 50 colonies is a BAD idea, which might be restrictive in options available.
I would suggest, instead of one outyard with 50 colonies, perhaps 2 out yards on different properties of 25 colonies each, with a notification to the land owner that you may expand to 50 colonies at each location. You need to be able to maintain flexibility in expansion, movement of colonies between apiaries, ability to abandon an apiary and move bees to another location on short notice; so you need a place to put them should this need arise. Consider also, that splitting the 50 colonies between 2 locations can help control spread of disease, maximize productivity and reduce the risk of some catastrophe taking out all the colonies in one swoop.
>would suggest, instead of one outyard with 50 colonies, perhaps 2 out yards on different properties of 25 colonies each
Or better yet three or four places (belonging to different people) that say you CAN put 25 hives each there and then spread them out more. If one of them doesn't work out (for whatever reasons) you have options. If one of them does really well, you can put more there. If one location does very poorly, you'll have somewhere to move them.
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