" My point was that it  appeared that 6 million hives results in enough competition for resources to reduce honey yields. "
 
 
 The lower 48 states have 1.9 billion acres.  Divided by six million that gives 300 acres per hive.  If I assume half of
 that land is either rivers, lakes, concrete, buildings or hard core desert that will not support bees it gives 150
 acres per hive.  If I assume the hives are not spread equally, but rather occupy effectively only 50% of the
 available forage area I still have 75 acres per hive.  That does not strike me as any place close to the level of
 saturation that would limit production.  I was a kid on a farm in IA back when we had that many hives.  I never knew
 anyone who ran any honey bees at all around where I lived other than two old single story box hives on one farm that
 harvested only a few pounds of honey each hive per year for the family that owned them.  I could run several modern
 hives at that same place today and with proper care get 100 pounds per hive I am sure.
 
 Consider Ill where Charles runs his hives today.  He is located right in the middle of a corn, soy bean desert. 
 Those fields do give him a early spring flow until planting.  After that his bees are dependent on fence rows,
 ditches, water ways that are not tilled and the occasional strip of hay that is generally mowed before full bloom and
 perhaps the occasional wood lot.  Unless he gets a soy bean flow which is not going to happen often where he lives those
 bees have pretty poor resources.  Yet, he can still run ten or so hives per site before he sees a yield drop due to over
 saturation.  The way farming was done back when I was a kid I bet that same area could have supported 30 hives per site
 before a yield loss was seen.  With all the alfalfa fields back then perhaps more than that.  My time as a kid was
 post sweet clover.  I never saw a single field of sweet clover as a kid in IA.
 
 A year ago my wife and I visited Yellowstone again.  Driving the hiways in Western WY you see a lot of yards of
 bees.  Often as many as 50 hives in a yard.  This is in pretty arid areas with no crop farming at all.  About 10 to
 15  inches of rain per year on average.  Besides sage and rabbit brush and cactus flowers those bees do not have much
 to work.  Yet it seems good enough to support quite a few hives per site.

 I really have to wonder how many of those six million hives were like the two I knew of in IA.  Single story boxes
 about 16 inches wide by 20 inches deep and 18 inches tall as I remember.  Roughly a double deep size.  And they were
 kept just to supply the family with some honey for the table.  In such a small box they must have swarmed every
 year at least once.  If there were a bunch of those that tells you why the honey yield was low.

 Dick

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