Q – Do you move your hives during the Summer to take advantage of honey flows? Do you pollinate multiple crops? (almonds, pears, apples, cranberries, carrots, sunflower)
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A-Thank you for sending us your information on overwintering success. You asked about pollination when you sent the data. Small scale beekeepers generally do not rent their colonies for pollination of agricultural crops but our larger scale do rent bee colonies to an average of 5 crops. All the crops you asked about do require and benefit from honey bee pollination. We do a separate pollination economics survey at OSU – our report from last year was published in the June 2014 BEE LINE newsletter of the Oregon State Beekeepers. You can see this report by accessing the website orsba.org and checking on the Bee Line archive information.