Chris said:

> Is there any correlation between numbers of hives kept
> in a small area and the relative difficulty in getting
> them through lean times?

I guess if one were to keep bees in the Sahara Desert,
with the only forage within flight range in a limited
area around an oasis, one might "overload" the area
with hives to the point of having some hives in danger
of starving.

In a less extreme case, it seems reasonable to think that
one could "saturate" a specific area with hives, and see
a lower yield per hive.  There has to be a "Nth hive",
which, if placed in the area, adds nothing to the net harvest.
But has anyone ever seen this, or even attempted to find the
exact "productive limit" for any one area?  I doubt it.
Too many variables.

A typical bee has a "lifetime" that appears to be limited
by distance flown.

  (A. Neukirch, 1982. "Dependence of the life
  span of the honey bee (Apis mellifica) upon
  flight performance and energy consumption".
  [J. Comp. Physiology] 146B:35-40)

Bees are estimated to only fly 140 to 500 miles in a lifetime.
So, even though bees can forage at long distances from the hive
(I recall the "record" being 15 miles from the hive for marked
bees, but I don't remember where I read this), long distances
clearly reduce both the number of completed sorties per bee,
and the number of trips per bee lifetime.

Bees are said to be able to carry a maximum "payload" of
90 milligrams of nectar, so if you estimate the bees, the
blossoms, and the average amount of nectar per blossom,
I'd guess you could get a rough idea.

But the "poor foraging conditions" I spoke of had nothing
to do with limited available forage.  What I spoke of was
seemingly unending daytime rain, limiting flight hours.

The rain continues here in Virginia.

I can barely keep the grass cut between rains.
Things have grown and bloomed better than in the past
5 years.  But flight ops are grounded more often than
they are not, and there is nothing to do but crank up
the stereo and play the song "Who'll Stop The Rain?"
by "Creedence Clearwater Revival", or better yet,
"Riders on the Storm" by the Doors.

For the past 5 years or so, things were so dry that
there was nothing to do but play a different song by
Creedence - "Have You Ever Seen The Rain?".

The neat thing about replacing one's CD player with
an old Sun Sparc 4 server and a big disc array is that
one can set up entire days of "appropriate" music for
one's mood with a single "Google"-like query. Other good
music to play if one the lacks the scuba gear apparently
required to work one's hives includes:

Song/Artist
------------

Always the sun/The Stranglers
Blame it on the weatherman/B*witched
Candle in the wind/Elton John
Cloudbusting/Kate Bush
Cloud Nine/Temptations
Cruel Summer/Bananarama
Crying in the rain/A-ha
Don't let the sun go down on me/Elton John
Here comes that rainy day feeling again/The Fortunes
Here comes the rain again/Eurythmics
Here comes the sun/George Harrison
I can't stand the rain/Eruption
Invisible sun/The Police
It never rains/Dire Straits
It's raining again/Supertramp
I wish it would rain/Temptations
Just walking in the rain/Johnny Ray
Like a hurricane/The Mission
Like the weather/10000 Maniacs
November rain/Guns n Roses
Once upon the weather/Agnes Poetry
No rain/Sting
Purple rain/Prince **
Rain/Madonna
Rain/Orange Juice Jones **
Rain/The Cult
Rain and tears/Aphrodite's Child
Raindrops keep falling on my head/Dionne Warwick **
Rain in May/Max Werner
Rainy day in London/Boulevard
Rainy days and Mondays/Carpenters
Rock you like a hurricane/Scorpions
Run like the wind/Mike Batt
Rythm of the falling rain/The Cascades
Seasons in the sun/Terry Jacks
Shadows in the rain/The Police
She like's the weather/Counting Crows
She's a rainbow/Rolling Stones
Song of the wind/Project Pitchfork
Standin' in the rain/ELO
Summer and lightning/ELO
Summer rain/Alphaville
The sun ain't gonna shine any more/The Walker Brothers
Thunder/East 17
Thunder in my heart/Leo Sayer
Thunderstruck/ AC/DC
Waiting for the hurricane/Chris de Burgh
Waiting for the sun/The Doors
When the rain begins to fall/Pia Zadora & Jermaine Jackson **
White clouds/Tangerine Dream
You don't need a weatherman
 to know which way the wind blows/Dylan

(** Indicates songs that one should avoid.
I fear that the entire system would self-destruct
rather than play such music.)

                jim

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