I've been planning on moving my nine beehives from a location that hasn't been good for my bees, to a location that's full of so much biodiversity and flowering things; it's admist a vibrant national park.
Now, I rang the owner, seeing if he wanted to go through with the move; the reception was poor, he said that he didn't want the bees to move there, I vaguely heard something about him being concerned about there being more bees on his 45 acre property, and being concerned about someone (children?) getting stung by bees. We ended the call, and he rang back a few minutes later, saying that his wife told him that there's a bee shortage in the world, which apparently was the reason why he had a change of heart, and wanted me now to move not just a couple of my beehives as suggested, but all nine.
So now I'm left wondering what to actually do. It's difficult for me to move beehives, I need to get a trailer, which I have no experience in, and it'd be unsafe to attempt to move them by myself, considering he lives in the hills, so I'm dependent on someone helping me by driving the trailer. I really don't want to have to move them there, then move them elsewhere. I figure though, that there's a low chance he'll want me to move them, once they're established there; I doubt he'll notice much more bee activity from nine hives, living in a 45 acre surronded by national park.
Another concern that I have, is I'm not sure if I'll be creating too much of a demand on myself, by having nine hives at one location. I have six on another, and I rarely seem to ever be able to complete all the required maintence work on six hives during one day. It's an hour drive to this place, so I wonder if it'd be more fuel effective to have a more managable hive count here. Granted, these six hives are particularlly demanding hives and I doubt these nine that I'll be moving will ever get to such a state.
I also have two other apiary site locations that I can set up more locally. They're pretty decent, but by no means the gold mine that this other place is. I wonder if I should just capture a bunch of swarms come spring time, and set up all 3 locations; I'd then have 4 apiary sites, with about 25-30 hives. Currently, I have 20, and am struggling to manage it all, so not sure if setting up more hives and sites is wise, but I do have all the boxs and frames set up ready to go.
I'm a bit unsure what's the best way to proceed, and would appreciate some feedback.