Can I set up bee hives on a property that I only visit 2-3 times a year (in spring, summer/fall, and maybe winter) and have them survive? I don’t know the least bit about bee keeping, so I don’t know if they require weekly or monthly maintenance. Is this something that can be generally successfully accomplished, keeping them alive and harvesting honey with only a couple visits a year?
Depends a lot on what the climate is. Certainly you don’t need to be around an apiary 24/7, in fact, commercial beekeepers make most of their income renting out hives to farmers. They truck a bunch of hives to an orchard, for example, and leave them there for a few weeks for pollination.
However, beehives aren’t what I would call maintenance-free. Nothing on a farm is. If you are talking about the Northern US states, you will need to prepare them for wintering and in the spring, prepare them for summer. As the season progresses, you will remove and replace supers as they get filled up. If you don’t, you will waste your honey crop and the hive may swarm, losing half of your bee stock.
Spoken as an ex-beekeeper in the Midwest. I kept a few backyard hives as a hobby when I was in school, nothing commercial.
Western Pennsylvania. My gf thinks/plans about getting bees each year. So far we just have a small apiary library. From what I’ve read, there is always something you need to be doing with them.