Rob

I am mixed non-certified organic and traditional.  We do zero spray on everything someone is going to eat, fruit trees included.  We are pretty well diversified so if we get a bad year in one crop type its overlapped by a half dozen others.  That gives us a lot of flexibility in how organic and natural we go.  No pesticides ever touch our 300 acres except for paper wasps in and around our stables and our saw mill.

With only 20 acres I would almost suggest just putting your colonies close to the forage material.  I have deliberately static yards off farm next to river bottom (some on pallets to move in case of predicted flooding) and large wooded regions (here in Cincinnati I have some bees less than 3 miles from Downtown but they are right next to 10 thousand acres of wooded parkland (which is a fantastic spring brood rearing forage zone) and residential mix low income and affluent (green).  I have actually found the inner city areas to be more chemical free in terms of pesticides than most white collar neighborhoods and suburban sprawl.

If you are using most those 20 acres (I am assuming sweet corn, popcorn, and sunflower) then you are talking even less than 20 acres which is quite literally a pin prick in the forage area of a colony.

A suggestion from one farmer-beekeeper to another is to possibly rethink what you are growing for market AND have a lot of discussions with local farmers nearby.  No one directly adjacent to our main colonies in our valley is using any insecticides.  I am uncertain in other areas but try to do a sort of spiral tour (Google Maps and GPS is your friend here) when we set up new out yards.  Few corn or bean growers around us are using anything by ROund-Up ready and then only if they are in river bottoms.  If they have good flat ground that is not up against a heavily wooded lot and doesn't receive flooding then it should be fairly easy to control competitive non-crop plants.  They also get a nice premium at the local elevator (usually hovers around .75 a bu).  Discussing stuff with neighbors REALLY helps a lot especially if it comes with a quart of honey. Not all of them are going to agree, but if you get a couple to do so, they might influence others.  Its amazing how well spreading the word in a region still farmed by families works. You may not get them to stop using a glyphosate style GMO (Round-Up Ready)  but you might be surprised how many you can get to stop spraying pesticides.  Honestly, sometimes these guys are simply doing what Extension tells them to do.  Here in Ohio, I'll argue that Extension and the Department of Ag does very little to promote good bee health which is sad given the rich history Ohio has had in developing modern beekeeping.  Last year at our small fruit and vegetable conference they suggested alternative pollinators AND were doing spray re-qualification rather than cutting down on sprays and promoting local cultivars and working with beekeepers.  The idea that anyone doing a full modern spray regime in an orchard or in pumpkins/melons/squash is going to have native pollinators that are going to work their crop is absurd.  But that is what I see around here.  I do tend to see quite healthy crops of honey coming from soybeans, especially those mixed with a nice solid native plant/weed species in the barriers on river bottoms (for us that's ironweed, sunchokes, thistle, goldenrod, a variety of asters along with later bloom clover and dandelions, and a variety of this vetch I see everywhere but have no name for....it has these small pink flowers, its the very last thing in bloom and runs till we get a killing freeze.  In a world of corn though most farmers still want to plant nothing but corn, even beans would fall by the wayside if it weren't for the fact that we try to eek out as much as we can from the crop to keep the price as high as possible, keeping it in rotation.  Soft Red Winter Wheats have all but died off locally.

I am not trying to talk down to what you want to do but I think there is time and money better spent on other methods to control forage and bring in better forage.  A lot of what you can do depends on how close you are to population areas. Sunflowers CAN bring in good money as cut flowers but are quite labor intensive to harvest seed by hand, more so than shelling beans to dry (not so much if you have a harvester though).  If you are looking for a good cash crop it may not necessarily be a good honey crop (though maybe a good pollen crop) and regardless of what you plant even at 20 acres is going to be a drop in the bucket in total forage for the bees.

All that said, I would very much consider a late season or multiple bloom crop that will either A) provide a fantastic pollen source (like a mustard) or something late season that will provide a forage source during your local dearth (for us that's thistle, almost the only that is in bloom besides Queen Anne's Lace during a hard dearth).  I wish I could get more dark honey.  I have several markets, bakers, and restaurants that would love a more diverse honey selection.

I try to stay out of the whole GMO vs organic argument since we do both right now.  I personally would love to move away from GMO and go zero spray all together and hope to do so in the next seven years once I get my small grains worked out.  I think that the more farmers learn how to be farmers again rather than tenders of simple monocrop farming (be it almonds or soybean or corn or apples) we will see a much healthier agricultural setting for beekeepers and their bees.  Till then, they very thing that is driving the need for massive amounts of migratory beekeepers is also the thing that is least sustainable and healthy overall in regards to our agriculture.

Just some food for thought and keep up the good work.

Richard Stewart
Carriage House Farm
North Bend, Ohio

An Ohio Century Farm Est. 1855

(513) 967-1106
http://www.carriagehousefarmllc.com
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