Land needed for Raising Bees?
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Question by portiaraylee: Land needed for Raising Bees?
How much land or space should someone have if they want to have a single bee hive?
Feel free to answer in the comment section below
One Response to Land needed for Raising Bees?
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Technically, none. You could have a beehive on a balcony on a condo, and just have the bees go out and forage for themselves.
Bees will fly up to five miles from their hive in search of flowers. Generally they keep it under 2.5 miles from their hives.
It’s also not a matter of how much land, but how many flowering crops you have that are flowering at different times.
On our farm, the dandelions of course are the first flowers. Then the cherry and plumb trees start to bloom. Then the apple and pear trees bloom after them. Usually some of our pollen producing plants, like lilacs, roses, and allysum start to bloom then. So on and so forth. Always something for the bees to find blooming on our farm.
People that only grow a single thing though, like the raspberry farmers around me, rent beehives, and have them only for a few weeks. Then their plants are done flowering and it’s time for the hives to move to a new crop.
Kind of difficult to give you an exact answer, since there are so many factors.
~Garnet
Permaculture homesteading/farming over 20 years
Bohemian_Garnet_Permaculturalist
November 15, 2011 at 7:55 pm