> provide a small number of hives to truck gardens, backyard orchards, etc.
within 25 miles typically charge for rental by hive?  

Colonies built up in time to pollinate the southernmost apple blooms can
easily swarm before they are done working the last of the most northernmost
orchards served by the pollinator.  To make matters worse, many colonies
must be fed while they work apples, or they will start to lose significant
weight.  Apple nectar and pollen are just that low sugar and low-protein.

So, one makes splits, as some colonies were thinking about swarming before
their first orchard placement, and others will get the idea as they build up
from all the feeding.

At Farmageddon Apiaries, we took those splits down off the ridges and rented
them in the valleys for home canning gardens and small orchards.  No apple
grower would pay a dime extra for a nuc or a split, so they paid for
themselves by getting a pollination placement or two as their first
destination after being split. This use of these splits made them easier to
transport (Volvo wagon pulling a lawn-care trailer, not a truck), less
intimidating to the homeowner/gardener, as populations where about what one
would expect with a split, and as they were off the wagon train tour of the
orchards, far easier for teenage labor to inspect and tend before and after
school as they expanded.  We'd get $40 to $50 per split per placement in
1990s rural Virginia dollars, and most of them only got one placement. 


		

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