Moving your hives

[Nock]

I have two farms that I trap where the landowners plant sunflowers for doves. Both are a couple acres. Should I look into getting permission to move my hives there while they are blooming?  Is that enough sunflowers to be worth doing?  I?ve read they like sunflowers. Does anyone else move there bees?

[BeeMaster2]

How many acres are planted and what type of sunflowers?
Jim Altmiller

[Nock]

How many acres are planted and what type of sunflowers?
Jim Altmiller

I?m not sure what kind they plant. I can find out. 2 acres at one spot and 4 in another.

[Nock]

Black oil. And now from what I?ve read they don?t really care for it. Looks like I don?t have to worry about it.

[saltybluegrass]

Well crap , I?ve  planted SF all
Over with echinacea- hope they find something they lik :grin:e

[ed/La.]

The bees will take the best pollen available. Look and see if there is any bee activitie when the sun flowers bloom. You might want to put them there next year.

[Oldbeavo]

We have put bees on black oil sunflower, they did well, really yellow wax and a reasonable honey flow.
Bees can have a big impact on yield due to better pollination and more seeds set.
We put 50 hives on about 30 acres of sunflowers

[BeeMaster2]

Try putting 4 hives on the 2 acres of sunflower.
Jim Altmiller

[Michael Bush]

If you are putting them in the middle of 640 acres of a good nectar plant that is blooming, you would certainly come out ahead.  Less might come out ahead.  A coupe of acres, maybe if you are only moving one or two hives, you'd come out ahead.  But all of those would depend on moving them more then two miles so they don't all drift back to the original location.

[Nock]

It would be just two hives. One spot is little over 3 miles from me. The other is over 10 miles.