when are beehives over crowded

[BruinnieBear]

You will need to talk with whomever you buy the mix from as to soil requirements.

Next he ground up the earth with his various attachments and then we added a bunch of bags of lime, then the seeds I believe, then the fertilizer and mixed all this together and buried it all.

We actually planted other stuff as well, buck forage oats and winter wheat. This was for the deer.

...JP

Sure sounds and looks like a ladino variety to me.  Like Regal or Pilgrim.  Ladino does not respond well in acidic soils, hence the lime.  We use it up here on quality management plots for improved anler growth.  It can be overseeded in grass sod in the fall (1-2#'s/acre), but you won't get as nice a stand as JP's, unless you do a little field work.

[BruinnieBear]

hives in location can vary a lot, I can put 400 on a location but would have to feed all the time, to get honey certain location can't handle more than 5-10 hives, I have some yards with 20 hives and some with just 7 hives, some location just can't support extra hives, not enough to forage on. since it can be like this here I put about 10 on a new location and keep checking to see how much they have coming in, if a lot then I can put a few more but if not much then I take a few from that location, I just try to keep enough hive at a location to maximize the flows. to many hives in a single location can eat up all the honey so its best to not over load a area unless you know it can handle it.

I spoke with Leon Metz, a former commercial guy in SW WI at our Spring regional meeting.  His response to the same question was about the same as TwT's above.  He told me his limit was 10-14 spaced about two miles apart, until he saw the results.  I know he made money, and had to quit because of health issues.  Location, Location, Location.  Not the almond groves up here.

BB

[Pix]

I've heard that 1 hive per acre of forage is very spacious.

JP I love your swarm photos on Picasa. Amazing!

[SlickMick]

I dont know why I haven't replied to this thread before because I certainly have read through it a few times. I especially recall the lovely pics of JP's clover.

I have 5 hives and 2 nucs in metropolitan Brisbane, our state capital city. I am only about 3 miles from the CBD as the crow flies and all the hives are on a 1/4 acre house block but they use the whole community as their resource. They are about 1/2 mile from heavily wooded park land. I know of at least one additional hive in their foraging area but there could be more. Still, they are always bringing in nectar, so it would always seem to me as has already been pointed out that it depends on your local environment. I have seen queen breeders (2) with hives covering every inch of their property. One actually lived within a mile of the CBD and the other not more than a mile or 2 from me and they had been there for years with no apparent nectar source.

Mick