How could I tell if I even have enough forage for bees? Like I've said, I live in an arid area where there is little if anything blooming, and no irrigation water to grow anything. I put an ad in the local paper to see if there was a local beekeeping group or individual that could advise me, but no response to date.
Still just in the curiosity phase. Hay has me worried. Currently at $14 to $15 a bale and rising!
~S
yeah, around here it's the 2-wire 50-60 lb bales and they're going for $11 (ouch!)
I kept bees in the high desert of So. Cal, and that's pretty arid...
How to know if there's enough forage for bees?
bees will readily travel 3 miles for forage, and sometimes as much as 5 miles. so look on google earth and see if you can identify any crops or hay or natural forages within a 5 mile radius of where you live. if you've got an extension office in your county, you could call them and see if they have any info on what's local forage. contact the state beekeeper's org and see if they can refer you to anyone in your area, or in an area with similar climate/flora.
when I lived in CO, I didn't do bees, but I remember alfalfa, clover, mustard, sweetflag, owl clover, lots of wild flowers, buckwheat, sumac and other wild plants that bees forage. I seem to recall seeing mesquite honey, so that might be another. don't know about sage brush, but I've seen sage honey, so that might be one too. in addition, many crops including alfalfa, corn, squash, tomato, pumpkin, cucumber, melons, peas, beans, most kitchen herbs, strawberries and most tree fruits and some nuts are good for bees. ragweed is another posibility. some flowering yard ornamentals are good sources.
here in MO where I live now we have a very plentiful spring, a zero-forage summer, and, if we get rain, a fall forage season that makes honey too strongly flavored for most folks' taste (so we sometimes leave that for the bees to winter on). if we don't get a fall rain (like last year) we end up feeding the bees for the fall and winter (unless we took no honey off at the end of the spring flow.) I keep bees to pollenate my garden first, and provide honey second, so my management is different than someone who wants them for the honey. because you have longer colder winters, you'll need to manage them so you leave enough supply on board to take them through the winter.
something to watch out for in your potential forage area: GMO crops that are "roundup ready" may cause problems for bees (some speculative evidence that they contribute to colony collapse) so you might want to know more about the crops being planted if you have some near by. local farmers who spray their crops with insecticides are another issue to pay attention to.
in the CA high desert I suplemented my bees with feeding only if the hives were light going into the winter. mostly they did just fine on wild radish, mustard and other wildflowers, mulberry, sage, buckwheat, and a few small home orchards and gardens within a few miles of me.
