--- You wrote:
 Planting forage for bees seems to be economically un-feasible.
 I'd use yellow sweet clover as it is also a terrific green manure/soil
conditioner, and it is relatively inexpensive.
Adam
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--- end of quoted material ---
2 years ago i had the field around our house, buildings, and my hives in New
Hampshire increased from 2 to approximately 3.5 acres. the additional 1.5
acre was a thick pine woods and i had it cleared, destumped, and leveled with
a dozer. in New England trees are weeds--if you don't do anything to a
clearing it'll be head-high in brush and saplings in a year. i figured that
since i had to plant something and keep it mowed or have it revert i might as
well plant something for the bees. using as a guide a series of articles that
appeared in Gleanings in Bee Culture about that time i planted a fifty-fifty
mix of birdfoot trefoil and alsike clover. since this is still an
agricultural area the seeds were readily available at the local feed 'n seed
store.
 
i limed the area before i planted. the soil surface was broken and clear
having just been worked over by the bulldozer. i probably did not use enough
lime, but the seeds germinated (i spread innoculum also). the first year
('92) the growth was unimpressive and there was not much bloom. last year
they both bloomed abundantly! this year the clover is hard to locate but the
trefoil is now coming into a good bloom. i don't know if the clover is
suffering from PH problems, poor soil fertility, or must be reseeded often (i
can't remember if alsike is an annual, perennial or biennial??)
 
i have not fertilized and except for the first year not spread any lime.
local advice is to lime, fertilize, plow, plant (at least every few years).
my attitude has been that i'm not supporting 5 tons of bovine biomass per
acre so i can get by with a smaller investment. the kicker is that except for
about ONE WEEK last june the honeybees have had better things to do! outside
of that one week last summer i could always find more bumble than honeybees
in the field. now as Adam says, this sort of endeavor appears economically
unfeasible and i've heard that before and i'm even more inclined now to
agree--i could never get my clearing, destumping, bulldozing costs back in
hive products. thats not why i did it, however. i AM blown away by how
assiduously the bees have ignored the forage.
 
i'd do it again in a minute, i have a beautiful field and lots of bumbling
bees on a sunny summer day. but i do think if anyone's gonna do this they
better be looking for something in addition to honey yield.
 
Rick Haver