I have thought about getting bees myself Tony. Just need to do more research on them. I had $960 in hive rental fees last year. But, they aren't there when I spray, which would be a problem if I started keeping them myself.
My brother's Uncle-in-law has thousands of hives and is looking to scale down ... we have gotten raw honey from him forever and I have been wanting to do this for a few years ...well the wife is as excited as I am now I have a meeting with him tomorrow night ....We are really looking forward to it .... Dan, start studying up on it.... very easy to start up and not too much time to upkeep it....
The biggest problem I have is that I need to spray insecticides once, maybe twice, a year and also spray fungicides. I couldn't have them on site during those periods. I would need another place to move them to far enough away not to mess with their navigation instincts during that time.
It all depends if you know a beekeeper or can hook up with one and trade a little work for supplies and/or bees... Starting with no help and 2 hives if you are buying everything ...around $500.00 ...if you can make your own hives then cheaper...now that is to start.... You will want an extractor to get your honey out of the combs....they feed themselves..use the same hive unless they get too big and swarm ... lots of info out there ...
Dan moving them is no issue, you block them in at night when they are in the hive, then you can do what you want, they will come back to the "new home" location from where ever it is. Black bears are the biggest problem you will have.
John G is absolutely correct. I've been a beekeeper for 8 years here. I don't know all there is to know about it but I know enough to answer a lot of questions. I removed bees from houses and barns for two years while I was starting out just to get the free bees to start and have had as many as 40 hives at one time. I currently have 15 after scaling down when the farm operation started getting over 300 acres a couple years ago. When you block them off at night, if it's warm and they have built their numbers high there may be some staying outside the hive, you can spray some water with a spray bottle and run them in...just don't try to use a flashlight while working them at night! Haha.
For you Dan a small trailer might work best, you could ratchet strap the hives down, and with a solar powered fencer move them when and where ever you would like.
Also, how far would you have to move them? This may also be something I'm forced into in the future, as my bee guy has been talking about getting out of the business.
Forgive all the questions, but how are you loading them on the trailer or whatever you're moving them with? The guy I get them from has a boom on his truck for loading and unloading them.
I would go a minimum of a couple miles, it depends how much available food there is as to how far they will travel. This the mess a black bear made of some of mine one night before the fence was ready. I hate bears, and you will too.
A dolly works just fine, just ratchet strap the hives and supers together first or you may have a dump out accident and a load of pissed off bees, lol. You have to put a strap around the hives around the center bottom up to tie a hive and supers together because they just basically sit on top of each other. I staple mine together but they are still flimsy. Sorry to interrupt, I know that wasn't directed towards me.
Where my farm is we have very few bears around. But, if I moved them I would most likely move them where there's more bears and would fence them in.
If I have hives on the ground as in setting on concrete blocks then I use three strands, the bottom one keeps the likes of coons, possems and skunks away, the other two are for bears. The hives up on racks just have one wire for bears.
