Hives away from home

[AlamoBee]

I am interested in starting to keep bees as a hobby, and hopefully get a little honey. I have been reading a lot, books and websites, but have a question I can't seem to find a straight answer for. I would be locating my hives at our rural property that is about an hour from home. We go almost every other weekend, but sometimes it could be 3 weeks between visits. Is that too much time away to have any success?  There are many times in spring and fall when we are there every weekend, and could arrange to go more at certain times as the bees need us. I just don't want to get my hopes up and invest in all the gear if this is doomed for failure based on being apart from the hives. Thanks.

[Michael Bush]

I was gone for 2 1/2 years.  The bees were still there when I got back.  Most of them anyway.  Of course they swarmed to the trees and sometimes ended up queenless and some die every winter.  But most of them were fine.

[Culley]

AlamoBee,

I don't know what your climate is like, but I have bees here at home which I look at pretty regularly (I enjoy it), and bees at a relative's place I look at only occasionally. I would think every 3 weeks would be more than enough, if you take it into account in your management.

[GDRankin]

I am interested in starting to keep bees as a hobby ... sometimes it could be 3 weeks between visits. Is that too much time away to have any success?

Welcome aboard AlamoBee,

I'm also in the San Antonio area. First year beekeeper here myself. So I will only offer what I've learned from others on this topic.

Mr. Bush has been at this a good while and has tons of great info on his site as well as his posts here. Visit this site often and take advantage of the wealth of information here. You'll find it more than useful if you go forward with becoming a beekeeper or "beek" for short.

I've learned that a good "rule of thumb" for hive maintenance is to try to budget about an hour per hive every two weeks. I have not been 100% strict with this, but I try to keep close.

An hour may be more than you'll need or a normal visit, but I find that it's a good average when you include the time it takes to get your smoker going, get suited up, inspect the hive, take a few pics and or notes and put everything back together again and go to the next box.

As for the 2 weeks between, the thinking on that is that if there happens to be a problem of some sort, if it is caught within the 2 week time frame, then the issue will either be easy to take care of or the damage and/or the down time minimized. Of course there are many variables, such as size of hives, time of year, during a nectar flow or a dearth, and so on, but again, this is just a good average to consider.

For example, say something happened to your queen. Maybe you accidentally killed her during the prior inspection and did not notice, or maybe robber bees took her out between visits. The sooner you know and replace her, the less downtime you will have with your brood cycle. Since the worker eggs hatch in 21 days, being queenless for that long or longer could create a significant drop in the workforce of the hive.

Anyway, that's just a bit of info I've learned and what makes sense to me at this stage of my beekeeping experience. There are many great folks on this site that are much more experienced than me and will likely chime in and offer their two cents.

One of the fun things you will learn about beekeepers, and this is a credit to the versatility of the bees as well as their keepers, when you ask a question in front of 10 of them, you may get 20 different answers. The neat part is that more than likely none of the 20 will be incorrect. (depending on the topic of course) Bees are just that versatile and adaptable and what works for one may not have been useful to the next. Sometimes that is a geographical thing and other times something else completely.

The bottom line, in my opinion anyway, I think you will be fine with your schedule based on what you described. There are times of the year (like now for example) that you don't even want to disturb the bees or open the hive. So . . . timing may be a part of your maintenance plan, but again, bees are resilient and should do fine within your schedule.

[BeeMaster2]

I have a hive that is about 5 houses down the street. I have not checked on it since I removed 3 medium supers from it in October. I also removed 3 supers of honey back in July. This hive is my best producer but it gets the least amount of attention. The other hives are in my back yard.
Jim