You ready for spring?

[Finally Home]

Hello there Finally Home! Mind if I call you Fin? Ooo Ooo Ooo how I would love living in blueberry country...

No problem.  We also found a guy a couple miles away that was giving away full grown blueberry bushes.  I happen to have a friend/customer that has a skid steer and tree spade.  We now have 50 of those bush's on our property................YUM-YUM

[brooksbeefarm]

Welcome to the forum Fin, you might check me out? but i've read/heard? that it takes three strong hives per acres to pollinate Blue berries, and that blue berries don't produce much nectar? Jack

[Finally Home]

Welcome to the forum Fin, you might check me out? but i've read/heard? that it takes three strong hives per acres to pollinate Blue berries, and that blue berries don't produce much nectar? Jack

We are trying to grow our own small orchard so to speak.  Recently bought the property and have planted many fruit trees, grape vines, strawberries and have a good sized garden.  Thought the blueberries would be a good addition and the price was right. An acre of them would have been way more than I could keep up with. Just enough for us and a little to sell. We have 4 double deep hives right now and hope to grow that to about 25-30.  We have hundreds of black locust trees on and around us so that will hopefully do them some good too.
Thanks for the welcome.  I'm enjoying the forum quite well already

[Jen]

Fin~ just think of all the added anti-oxidents to the blueberry honey. That's some good honey raught thar! If we knew that it was 100% blueberry nectar honey, I would pay good $ to have you ship me some ~

[brooksbeefarm]

Fin, looks like you have a good plan with the trees and berries your going to plant, the black locust make a real light honey with a extra good taste (to me). I have several black locust trees here on the farm, and have seen some years they never worked them? they must of found something they liked better. I put out Catalpa trees several years ago, and when they bloomed the first three years the bees were all over them,but i haven't seen a honey on them for the last 5 yrs.? but the Wasp and Bumble Bees love them. Another good investment is Buckwheat, plant it early (after last frost date) and i can get 3 and sometimes 4 blooms out of one planting.Good luck, and keep posting. Jack

[Jen]

I would choose buckwheat as well, but I think you need land where it doesn't matter if it is invasive.

[iddee]

Buckwheat is an annual, so therefore non invasive. It is self replanting to an extent, but will not continue without cultivation.

[Jen]

Very Cool! Think I'll plant some in my back alley 

[Jen]

[LazyBkpr]

Sweet clover and wildflowers..  The disk is ready.. going to run the draws with it and use the spreader to seed before the fields are planted.  Probably in the range of twenty acres when its all said and done. Will see if it has any impact on honey!
   Considering planting 300 acres or so in Bee forage, and bailing it a couple times a year. I think between selling the hay and honey I can make more than cash renting the land...  the debate on that is still out.

[riverbee]

we have done a lot of planting for bees in the last 5 years.  this year we readied and planted another 4 acres of buffer zones in what is corn fields near and on either sides of my hives, with bee forage friendly seeds/plants zone specific from prairie moon nursery. 2 acres on either side.  a lot of work. rental farmers, if you are not watching, like to cut into as much land as they can plant in; scootching over and over into tree lines and berry bushes to get every bit of corn they can. one of our rental farmers was a bit industrious at this without asking. next season they have been asked to go back to planting soybeans outside the planted areas rather than corn.  we cleaned up all the dead trees and brush in the buffer zones. hopefully some of the wild berry bushes will come back as well, if not, we'll get some planted, blackcaps and raspberries, they were choked out but some of them still looked like they might come back.  we are also planting buckwheat and more clover as well.

[brooksbeefarm]

What i like about buckwheat is that you can get a bloom from it in the dearth part of the summer. Another plant that gives nectar until frost is Vitex (a bush) mine has a purple bloom, i might as well give the Moon flower a plug also, it's a late summer bloomer. Jack

[LazyBkpr]

hehe.. I tell my renter to leave me enough room to run my bush hog along the fences...  if he plants too close it just gets mowed off. Usually only takes them a single year to understand that tapping the fence posts with the planter isnt going to gain them anything.

[lazy shooter]

It's nice to see we have rich land owners like LazyBkpr and riverbee renting their land to farmers.   The Vitex bush that Jack refers to prospers in our area.  I have a large one in my Weatherford yard and when it blooms it draws bees by the thousands.  I am going to plant some buckwheat this spring.  If our rainfall ever returns to normal, my bees will  have plenty of forage.  Oh well, hope springs eternal.

[Jen]

Laz- buckwheat is also good nutrition for the bees to forage on, good for their immune systems.

[LazyBkpr]

I've been reading that.. I think I will look into it a bit further...

   I'm STILL considering planting all 40 acres...  will see what I make off the honey in the next couple of years..  If Honey/Wax/Bees can make me more than I get for rent Why wouldn't I plant Buckwheet or Sweet Clover etc???   Cut it, Bale it, sell that too a couple times a year.. (after it blooms)   Might as well have grand ambitions of 200 hives and 300 to 400 acres planted in something both the bees and I can use!!!

   Rich Landowner...   Shooter I just got impatient waiting for my folks to die and bought it from them

[Jen]

Lazy- We just seeded our front and back yard with clover in the fall. Our quarter acre property is clay and shale, so the lawn always looks dry and burned out! the clover will spruce it up a bit.