# Bought 50 acres, want to get bees



## benevolance (Aug 10, 2008)

My wife and I recently bought 50 acres of wooded land that we are going to turn into an organic farm

We will have an orchard for Pears, Apples, plums, peaches, olives, cherries, Pecans, Walnuts, hazel nuts, butternuts, chestnuts..We will grow soapnuts also..We will have berries...Blue berries, blackberries raspberries, elderberries, Hawthornes, Currents, Huckleberry, maybe a few grapes also

We plan to grow herbs also...Lavender, Burdock,Coleander Echinacea, sage, Thyme, Rosemary, Goldenrod, Catnip, Heal all, and a few others.

And we will have a greenhouse and a garden...Grow a little corn and hay for the critters we eat

We will probably have 25 acres of herbs and orchard and then 25 acres of forest...which is mostly Maple (good feeding for bees I have read)

Yeah this is going to take several years to get going...We are going to start clearing land and planting the orchard trees next spring...

We were wondering how many hives can 50 acres support? we would love to have bees and sell honey...we make our own soap and candles and it is expensive buying bees wax...Would be better if we had our own. 

I was reading some other threads here that 100 hives is small time...But considering I will be living on the farm in about 2 years time..I do not think it will be too much to handle a hundred hives or so..

So how many hives can the 50 acre farm/orchard support realistically...I do not want there to be too many bees and not enough food for them


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## stranger (Feb 24, 2008)

The best thing to do before you go big time is have an out let for your honey. Everyone wants honey, but they don't want to pay what it's worth. 
how many hives the land can handle depends on how much food there is around, weather, and how many other people have bees near you.


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## benevolance (Aug 10, 2008)

There should I hope be more food than the bees can possibly consume..and considering that there is 845 acres of empty woods besides us (state owned land) we do not have to worry about neighbors


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## damoc (Jul 14, 2007)

*all depends on your area* but it is not uncommon to run 100 colonies on a property on one site but you will most likely get better honey production
per colony by running much less say 24 colonies.what is your area you may
have better oportunies for other forms of income for the hives ie pollination
services.


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## benevolance (Aug 10, 2008)

Well there are some apple orchards in the area...The land is in Maine USDA zone 5


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## benevolance (Aug 10, 2008)

I just had a thought...Could I not split them up into say colonies of 25? and places them away from one another?

I have read a lot on Bees in the past and I read somewhere that a Bee would travel a couple miles for food...Well my approach would be to have fields of flowers, herbs, orchards and woods so that there would be plenty of food for the Bees and they would not have to fly far away to get the nectar they need


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## Iddee (Sep 25, 2005)

5000 visits to flowers per teaspoon of honey. How many flowers will you have on 50 acres.
A hive will work approx. 80,000 acres.
40,000 bees per hive times 100 equals 4,000,000 bees.

Start with 2 to 4 hives, split them the second year, if successful.
20 to 40 hives is all you need per beeyard.
Beeyards should be at least 5 mile apart from each other.

A beginner's mistake costing a beek 4 hives is rough.
The same costing him 50 to 100 hives is devastating.


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## benevolance (Aug 10, 2008)

It will take us several years to have the place really going...We need to build the house, and then the barn and then the solar greenhouse...and so on and so forth...May take 5+ years to get all the fruit and nut trees planted because the land is forested and we need to cut down existing trees and clear land.. which can be a lot of work. So we can start pretty small with the bees and get maybe 2-4 hives and try that for a year or two and see how it goes.

I am not sure I want my bees pollinating other peoples trees if they are going to be using pesticides...We want to have an organic farm and it is my opinion that Pesticides are probably the reason of the massive Bee death waves. I could be wrong though.

Still it is hard to sell organic honey when you let your bees pollinate on land where pesticides and herbicides are used


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## indypartridge (Oct 26, 2004)

Iddee just posted a good list on what to do to get started in this thread:
http://www.homesteadingtoday.com/showthread.php?t=266422

It's very beneficial to become involved with a local club, and get connected with other beekeepers. There are a number of clubs in Maine:
http://www.mainebeekeepers.org/MSBA_Chapters.shtml

Since you're interested in organic, I recommend reading Ross Conrad's _Natural Beekeeping: Organic Approaches to Modern Apiculture_. (Ross is in Vermont, I think.)

Lastly, as Iddee noted, start small, work you way up. Sounds like you have a good plan: Good Luck!


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## benevolance (Aug 10, 2008)

yeah we will need some luck, and as much help as I can muster I reckon

We plan to join a beekeeping club in Maine...I will maybe look this guy up in Vermont


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## mtnmenagerie (Jun 16, 2007)

sounds like a wonerful plan! it would be fun to visit your farm in about 10 years! good luck.


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## benevolance (Aug 10, 2008)

yeah well...I am sure we will have good days and bad. We were so ready to get out of the south and out of the city


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## Durandal (Aug 19, 2007)

Sounds like an interesting set-up. Unless you are going to set aside time your first year, while trying to establish everything you have mentioned, I'd pick a couple things and focus on that.

Not to be a buzz kill or anything, but I have an established 302 acre farm, mainly corn and soybean, a 32 horse boarding operation, we bale 6000 50# bales a year, attend 2 markets, have a roadside stand, and 2 co-ops.

All of which is EASY (I've been baling hay for over a decade and we spent 8 years rebuilding and retooling for full-time farming) compared to starting from scratch. This year I bit off way more than I could chew in terms of growing for market (having never done that before) but I made a promise to not only NOT neglect my bees but learn as much as I could from them this year.

In the end I guess it depends on your goals. A lot of the fruits and nuts you plan on growing do not grow well others (like Hawthorne and Walnut) and depending on how many critters you have you may need a whole lot more hay and storage for it.

If one of your primary goals is to either produce products from the hive to live off of or sell then I would focus on the bee hives, establish a solid bee yard that you do not plan to drop tree nearby.

If not, I'd hold off till you get some of the more core things established, like a hay field, grazing area, and figure out how to shoe horn all those things you want to grow into 25 acres (which sounds like a lot, 25 acres is SMALL orchard that will bring in enough income to support a family if you have a dense urban population nearby to sell to...commanding good prices).

Hope that did not sounds to ranty or lecturing. I wish you all the best of luck...just try not to bite off more than you can chew and it will be one of the most rewarding and changing (both physically and mentally) experiences ever.

Read up as much as you can on beekeeping, ask questions here, check out a local bee club and get some local advise. Then in December or January, start getting ready. Build two hives, order your packages and then wait till spring. Meanwhile you have plenty of time to start transplants and do some winter clear cutting for the rest of your projects.









Another option is to focus on the other stuff and let a local beekeeper keep a couple hives, do a mentor type thing if you can find one, and then maybe buy a hive or two off of him/her when you have the time or the focus.


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## benevolance (Aug 10, 2008)

Well right now we have 50 acres... We want to look into buying the 50 acre parcel beside us...85 year old man who owned it just died...So who knows what the family will do with it.

Money is tight for us until we sell one of our homes...we have 2 right now and all our mad money is tied up in those houses...

Ideally we wanted a couple hundred acres...But land is expensive...we did see a piece of clear cut land that would be incredible for an orchard/ pasture...But we found it after we bought our land...It was 323 acre for something like 125,000

The land was a mess because the loggers raped it and left the brush...But if you were going to farm it would be dozing and grading it anyways.

If we get settled with 100 acres I will be content....Then we would have 50 acres of orchards/ Pasture

Yeah I have read that Walnuts are tempormental to get to produce nuts every year...Same thing with pecans...I have read a lot and it seems that if you plant a few different species of walnut together that helps a lot...cross pollination or some such.... Ditto with the pecans.

The land house and barn are all going to take time, but there will be no debt...So our primary goal is to grow all our own food...Generate our own electricity heat our home... and then generate a little cash to pay the property taxes and pay for some of the things we cannot make ourselves.

We do not feel that we have to make a fortune to be successful financially with the farm...In my experience it is not how much money you make it is how much you can live on and save... with no debt and making growing most of what we need...We will not need a huge stream of revenue to make a successful go of this.

Ideally we would like to have a small store in town and a huge greenhouse where we provide fresh produce all winter long... locally grown organic...We would have maple syrup, honey, candles, soap...get the wife to make baskets or quilts...In a few years when the nut trees start to produce we would have nuts berries jellies jams..All the stuff you would expect. In the past I have made adirondack furniture and pic-nic tables for side money when I was in college...So there are a lot of extra ways to generate money if needed to keep the farm running.

Mostly the plan is to keep my wife working...She has a good job as a school teacher...So when we sell one of the houses in South Carolina...Move up north...She can teach for a few years while we clear land plant the orchard and get things going...

That is ambitious I know...Once we have the house built a couple semi-retired family members will come live with us...So we will have a little help. I have a feeling that we will need it.


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