Talk about rapid growth

[Joe D]

Rapid beeyard growth is happening in neighbor hood, just not my bees.  I noticed several hives two houses down from mine.  Called my neighbor and he said, Oh, I did know you had bee.  And he had let a commercial beek put bees there.  And that the fellow liked the spot so well he was going to set up another yard a cross the road, with another 40 hives, 80 total.  They will be from just over a quarter to one half a mile from mine.  I am wondering how much more chances of mites and pest and disease my bees will come in contact with.  Up till now no one had bees within a mile or so and they were hobbies with 1 hive,  a couple of miles farther there was a guy with 2 hives.  I usually have 5 to 7 hives.



Joe

[BeeMaster2]

Rapid beeyard growth is happening in neighbor hood, just not my bees.  I noticed several hives two houses down from mine.  Called my neighbor and he said, Oh, I did know you had bee.  And he had let a commercial beek put bees there.  And that the fellow liked the spot so well he was going to set up another yard a cross the road, with another 40 hives, 80 total.  They will be from just over a quarter to one half a mile from mine.  I am wondering how much more chances of mites and pest and disease my bees will come in contact with.  Up till now no one had bees within a mile or so and they were hobbies with 1 hive,  a couple of miles farther there was a guy with 2 hives.  I usually have 5 to 7 hives.



Joe

Your biggest concern will probably be robbing which is where the mites would come from. I recommend you reduce your entrances down to about 2" if the hives are strong.
I have the same problem at my farm. The commercial beeks place hundreds of hives around my property. There are about 64 of them 60 feet from my property. I talked to one of the beeks about not putting them so close. He chuckled and said that if I got up in a plane I would find that I have thousands of hives within 2 miles of my hives. I have lost almost all of the small hives there.

Jim