Guilfordbeekeepers.org

Lets say you have 50 to 60 colonies with part of them a mile apart and someone brings in 16 pallets with 64 hives and sets up on property 1/4 mile from your house where you keep most of your hives.

How bad do you think this will hurt your honey production? What would be your reaction?

This area is mostly farmland and maybe 30% woodland and as you know we get no nectar from pines, cedars, oaks and many other trees.

I am concerned to say the least. I have built up a decent honey business and sold out every year. Last years will be gone very soon and my goal is to produce enough to last until the next harvest.

I'm not sure there is much you can do about it except steam. Do you know who the beekeeper is? Is this a more or less permanent placement or is this parking bees either for temporary pollination in this location or for transit? Do you know where the bees came from? Is it a "permit required" situation that may involve Don Hopkins?

The tool for bee forage range at this link (the next to the last link)

http://www.guilfordbeekeepers.org/commu ... f=6&t=1443

in our Just Stuff category is a bit clunky, but you can use it to see how far bees may go, how much yours and those will overlap, and to help you determine what plants are around in a reasonable forage area.

First, your harvest will either be nil or it will be the corn syrup or sugar water he is feeding his bees.
This area can, at best, support 25 to 35 hives in a location.

The sad thing is, there's likely little or nothing you can do about it other than talk to the beek.

Thanks,

They are all packages that were installed last Thursday for building up. I thought 40 or 50 would really be pushing the limits for my location. We know the keeper and Don Hopkins plans to speak to him next week. Hopefully he can find a location where hes not on top of another beekeeper. The close neighbors were very upset to come home and find bees all around their house and inside as well.

He left a stack of 64 empty deeps to be added when the bees are ready. I hope he didn't know there were so many hives already in the area and would want to find a better spot to set them.

Everything is good now. I called the beekeeper today and he had just moved them to another yard in Mebane. He installed the packages during the middle of the day and several homeowners came home and found bees flying all around their house and some in the house. They called the property owner complaining so the beekeeper moved the bees before I even talked to him.

He was unaware that I had bees so close.