Potential new apiary

[omnimirage]

I met a lady at a market recently who told me of someone who wanted bees at their property. The information I got was:

1) there's 60 acres of mallee scrub (a form of eucalyptus)

2) there's numerous water sources available

3) it's heritage listed, isolated land

3) it's a 30 minute drive from me

4) the owner was very friendly, likes bees and wants some honey in exchange

To me, the site sounded incredible. I looked up the address on google earth, and was very disappointed and frankly confused with what I saw. The majority of the area was pastureland. There may have been some flowers on shrubs closer to the ground, but there was hardly any lucrative eucalyptus trees. There was two batches of trees in the general area, hardly looked like 60 acres worth, less than a thousand trees. I'm under the impression that 60 acres is a large amount of land, I'm not sure if those two patches of trees was the 60 acres of mallee, maybe when she said "scrub" that included "barren spaces where no trees are growing".

It sounded so promising on the phone, but Google Earth has the site looking so crap, I seriously wonder if it's even worth some petrol and 100 minutes of my time. It looks so bad that, I wonder why the person would even suggest it, maybe she thought those two patches was enough. It's so bad that I'm confused, wondering maybe I've gotten something wrong, maybe I should just check it out because 60 acres sounds like a lot of trees...

[tedh]

If you've got the time and the petrol maybe a drive by would be worth it.  You could also use the opportunity to speak face to face with the land owner and maybe do a walk around with him/her.  Ted

[apisbees]

I do not think you are looking at the big picture. The 60 acres is just where the hives are located. When you factor in the bees flying range the 60 acres becomes irreverent. Flight range verses the acreage the bees are foraging.
Radius in miles      Forage area in acres
1/2                              502
1                                2008
1.5                             4521
2                                8038
Now if it was a crop that a farmer wanted pollinated they would want a density of bee hives at on average 2 hives per acre, to ensure maximum pollination. If the beekeepers are placing bees on a agricultural crop for nectar gathering we would only want to have a hive density of 1 hive for every 2 acres. Look at the forage area going out from the proposed 60 acre site and see what the real forage available to the bees will be. It will be more than the few trees in the field.

[omnimirage]

Unless there's a bunch of bush flowers, then it seems there's almost nothing there actually growing. The 60 acres does sound quite irrelevant. There just doesn't seem to be much going on in the area.

[apisbees]

there is a program that lets you adjust the foraging radius and shows where and to what extent the bees will forage.
https://hivetracks.com/
PM me the Longitude and Latitude of the site.