Similarly one may ask, how many hives do you need to make a living?
You can expect a commercial operation to place a minimum of 20 hives, maybe up to 50 hives on one farm. Each hive will grow to up to 5-6 boxes by the end of the season. That's quite a lot of bees: each one-box colony contains around 25,000 bees, so that's 500,000 (20 hives) up to 1.25 million bees (50 hives).
Similarly, how many hives does a colony have? Average bee hive densities (hives per acre) recommended for crops grown in the USA range from 1-7. Most crops that benefit from honey bees require 2-3. Recommended numbers have inched upwards in recent years because of a drop in wild honey bee densities. More managed bees are required to make up the difference.
One may also ask, how many beehives can you have in one area?
As a general rule of thumb, you should plan for about one acre per hive. When bees can't get enough nectar from the land around their hive and don't produce enough honey to live off of, beekeepers sometimes buy syrup or other artificial foods for them.
How many beehives should I start with?
two hives
