# General beekeeping > Bee blether >  For the love of <insert deity of choice> STOP RAINING.

## Neils

AAAAAAAAAAAaaaagh!

Sorry, had to get that off my chest.

I should have bought shares in Tate and Lyle.

Me and the Mrs were talking about packing up and moving somewhere with some land. That little place with 2 acres in France for £30k is looking more and more appealing. (it needs another £50k spending on it just to be liveable).

Having piqued our interest, what do you reckon the minimum amount of land is to supplement an income?  Not just bees, but chickens, ducks, fruit, crops even. Farmers market kind of scale.  The aforementioned place has to be used for crops or livestock. I've no idea if bees even count as livestock in France and 2 acres isn't enough for the hundreds of hives I reckon you need to make a living from it. 

So if you were serious about packing up, going somewhere where it's affordable, how much land do you reckon you'd need to "make a living" (I budgeted trying to make a living from beekeeping on a personal income of £30,000, ignoring Jimmy Carr tax dodges)?

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## Calum

Hi 
in Germany they say you need 300 hive to make a living from beekeeping.
If you have hens and goats you can save a bit on milk and eggs, and will always have something for the grill...
What about this? tickled my fancy..

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## gavin

Everywhere has its bad weather from time to time.  Mull seems to have a drought at the moment.  I'm looking on the bright side.  The ground is saturated and the lime trees are showing their buds again.  A bit more rain in the next week or so, queens mated in this last good spell, and when the sun comes out in a fortnight the nectar will be flowing in.

If you are planning to sell locally grown stuff to local people, you'll need the people to buy it, a good method of getting it to them, and you'll need to do it better than the folk already doing that.

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## Jon

> queens mated in this last good spell..


Fingers crossed. It touched 18c yesterday afternoon for a couple of hours.
I will be checking apideas at the weekend and I reckon any queens that did not fly by yesterday will have left it too late.
A queen which flew and mated yesterday should be producing eggs by Saturday.

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## Trog

Mull's drought has just ended with some useful rain and more on the way.  The onions will probably bolt but at least the rain gives us a break from the constant swarm-checking and the bees a chance to cap all the honey in the supers, most of which are too heavy for one person to lift so inspections have to be timed for when both of us are free.  One novelty this year has been the abundance of bees working honeydew on both ornamental cherry and sycamore leaves.  Hope the virgin queens got out for their mating flights before the weather turned.  Just know that the big hives will make swarm preparations while it's wet and windy then be off at the first sign of sunshine ... they always do that!

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## chris

Do you remember those John Seymour books back in the '70's? He reckoned a family of 6 could make a living on 5 acres. You'd have to use some muscle though.Which part of France? Do you speak French?Don't even dream of markets if you don't. There are some regions over here where you have been preceded by a type of English person that has left a bad impression.
However, if it's a real dream, then go for it-you can always sell the place back to some Brit for a good profit if things don't work out. One other thing- the majority of French farmers make their real money from subsidies. The others are going broke.

I think we had some rain once- I'll have to check out what it is :Wink:

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## Trog

Ah!  I have a John Seymour book - very useful.  Think my husband propped that up in front of him when he drew his first chicken!  There's advice on beekeeping, too, IIRC, from the happy days before varroa.

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## Neils

> Hi 
> in Germany they say you need 300 hive to make a living from beekeeping.
> If you have hens and goats you can save a bit on milk and eggs, and will always have something for the grill...
> What about this? tickled my fancy..


300 hives was about what I reckoned it'd take, in a good year, to get something approaching a liveable income from. (ignoring raising/selling bees themselves) It's also why everytime the Mrs goes off down this route that I try and persuade her that I really don't want to try and make a living from beekeeping  :Smile: 

As someone once said to me: "If you want to make a small fortune from beekeeping, start with a large one".

The farm looks nice too, that money won't buy you a two bedroom house round these parts!




> Do you remember those John Seymour books back in the '70's? He reckoned a family of 6 could make a living on 5 acres. You'd have to use some muscle though.Which part of France? Do you speak French?Don't even dream of markets if you don't. There are some regions over here where you have been preceded by a type of English person that has left a bad impression.
> However, if it's a real dream, then go for it-you can always sell the place back to some Brit for a good profit if things don't work out. One other thing- the majority of French farmers make their real money from subsidies. The others are going broke.
> 
> I think we had some rain once- I'll have to check out what it is


I think we're in agreement that the most lucrative crop farmed by the French is EU subsidies  :Smile: 
This particular place was close to Limoux in Aude, but as we're in pipedream stage of planning we're (or the Mrs  at least) not even tied to France, let alone a particular part of it.

Neither of us is close to being fluent in French which is an important point.

I think the Mrs is viewing all of this through particularly rose tinted specs at the moment but I think it's hard not to when you see what an amount of money that wouldn't count as a deposit around these parts will get you elsewhere.

I don't think she's quite considered just how much effort is likely to be involved in her grand plan to get away from it all, but we can dream right?

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## chris

> Neither of us is close to being fluent in French


That's it then. I really can't imagine you in a situation where you wouldn't be able to talk to people.

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## fatshark

> What about this? tickled my fancy..


Surely off topic ... the thread title was " ... STOP RAINING".  Arran is a verdant green island ... because of the rain.  About 1.5 - 1.9 metres per year.

Notwithstanding the rain, Arran and much of the west coast are beautiful.  And very little OSR  :Smile:

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## Jon

> That's it then. I really can't imagine you in a situation where you wouldn't be able to talk to people.


I think Nellie is in the same category as me which could accurately be described as garrulous.

In 1988 my other half talked me into moving to Spain as she had got a job teaching English.
At that stage I had a total of about 10 words of Spanish, mostly related to beer and wine, and I can remember a really strong feeling of isolation as I was so used to spending my free time bantering with mates and I was now reduced to a mixture of sign language an pidgin.
After 6 months I could read pretty fluently but it took me a good 5 years to gain any degree of verbal fluency.
Reading and writing is easy as you have all the time in the world but listening and speaking is way more demanding.
people who do not speak a second language think that you kind of absorb it through the skin if you move abroad but I remember Spain was full of 20 year veteran expats who still had no Spanish at all.
maybe I am just a plodder with regard to foreign language acquisition but I can remember putting in a lot of really hard work at the start, always reading the paper with a dictionary and a notebook open and stuff like that.

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## HJBee

> I think Nellie is in the same category as me which could accurately be described as garrulous.


or is that Gallous?  ;0)

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## Neils

You know how to wound  :Wink:

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## gavin

I'd take it as a compliment!

http://literalbarrage.org/blog/2005/...he-day-gallus/

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## Neils

The first definitions I found were the "deserving to be hanged"  :Big Grin:

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## gavin

HJBee, being the lovely lady she is, will have meant the 'stylish, impressive' variant.

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## HJBee

I'm no lady Gavin, as I often tell folk (one tries from time to time for appearances sake).

Adjective  - Gallous
fit to be hanged; wicked; mischievous

After reading a lot of posts from Nellie & Jon, I would say I am fairly accurate with the last 2 for sure!

The manner in which this adjective is used by the Glasga natives (my relatives and colleagues) is usually in a complimentary manner (oooh the banter for any chewing the fat fans) .  This was my attempt at joining the boys 'lighthearted banter' peppered across the forum. It seems I failed with the need for explanation, will go and stand in the corner of the room for about 2 minutes penance. 😏

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## Neils

Not at all, I'm going to point at Gavin rather than me and suggest we send him to the SBAi naughty step.

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## chris

> maybe I am just a plodder with regard to foreign language acquisition


Without wishing to compliment you, I believe the speed of learning a second language is inversely proportional to ones intelligence :Confused:

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## Jon

There is a grain of truth in that in my experience but I think the key thing is personality trait. Some are too lazy and think the rest of the world should speak English. Other perfectionists will not say anything if there is a chance of making an error - bad strategy for a beginner! There was one of our crowd who used to correct all of us on inappropriate use of the subjunctive but he couldn't hold a conversation with anyone. 
The key thing is getting a bit of confidence and being prepared to communicate through paraphrasing at the start. If you don't know the word for donkey it is perfectly acceptable to say that you saw and animal like a horse but with bigger ears.
At some point heading towards fluency you realise that you are not declining verbs internally any more and your discourse is coming out of your mouth the same way English does but with a funny accent. That's the way it worked for me anyway. I dropped all languages early on at School, mostly in favour of Science subjects. I picked Geology over French, after 3 years of French, Geography over Latin after 3 years and Art over German after one year of it. I have a mental block about German (sorry Doris and Eric!) I just could not get my head around that language at all.
Spanish is so like Latin
Verb to be.
Sum Es Est Sumus Estis sunt
vs
Soy eres es, somos estais son

Best adjective for garrulous in Spanish is probably baboso, from baba meaning slaver or spittle.

El apicultor de Bristol es baboso.

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## Bumble

> Best adjective for garrulous in Spanish is probably baboso 
> 
> El apicultor de Bristol es baboso.


It's a good job you translated first. A guess, using my non-existant Spanish/English translation skills, would have made me think you were saying baboon-like.

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## chris

> It's a good job you translated first. A guess, using my non-existant Spanish/English translation skills, would have made me think you were saying baboon-like.


In French, it would be bavard, which comes from baver, which means to slaver or drool.
So, we come up with a drooling baboon.

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## Neils

Ook?

Anyone got a banana?

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## beeanne

You need to find somewhere where people will be delighted to help yr attempts at speaking the language.... hence my arabic is /was good, my French is rubbish. 
Amount of land surely depends on what the land is like. And what you want your money to stretch too.

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## Bumble

By the way, it's still raining.

Does anybody know a good rain-stopping dance?

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## gavin

I've just spent over a week in a place where it never properly rains (until the El Nino kicks in) although you can get a bit damp in the mists that roll in off the sea in their 'winter'.  So I was quite glad to come back to a green and pleasant land, until I saw the height of the weeds in the vegetable plot.

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## Jon

It never rains in the bar.

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## Bumble

Weeds are about the only thing growing in our vegetable plot. We also had a week away, came back to find everything we had carefully planted had been munched to ground level by slugs.

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## Jon

My allotment is also in dire shape.
Nothing seems to be growing well this year although I did pick a few kilos of gooseberry last week.
The parsnips and onions look to be more or less ok.
Autumn raspberry ok.
Spuds have a touch of blight.
the bordeaux mix get washed off as fast as it is sprayed on.

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## Neils

We've got a fine crop of grass and not much else growing on the allotment too. Still it was a good excuse to buy a strimmer.

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## HJBee

> Weeds are about the only thing growing in our vegetable plot. We also had a week away, came back to find everything we had carefully planted had been munched to ground level by slugs.


Same for me Bumble & they seem to have an immunity to the organic Slug Pellets. Needless to say I felt better when I saw that Harlow car were in a losing battle with them on some plants too. No brassicas or courgette / marrows for me this year!

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## gavin

I was particularly proud of my calabrese (thanks partly to this wet summer), but despite wire netting fencing all round and green plastic netting on top something has neatly eaten out the developing heads.  Seriously peed off.  Any ideas?  I have some smaller plants developing alongside.

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## Bumble

Pigeons can land on plastic netting and get at the plants underneath and if the mesh is wide enough cabbage whites will lay through the gaps. Slugs like calabrese too, and sometimes settle down within the developing head.

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## EmsE

> I was particularly proud of my calabrese (thanks partly to this wet summer), but despite wire netting fencing all round and green plastic netting on top something has neatly eaten out the developing heads.  Seriously peed off.  Any ideas?  I have some smaller plants developing alongside.


 I would suggest chickens. They will eat most bugs, especially slugs. However, they're also quite partial to calabrese  :Wink:

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## EmsE

P.S 5 days with no rain despite the forcast predictions. Beautiful day in Ayr watching bees on the OSR and seeing queens successfully mated, unlike the drone breeders I've managed to rear  :Frown:

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## Neils

Well they're promising  change in the weather with the Jet Stream heading off North where it's supposed to be. But it's too late for just about everything on the allotment, even the garlic succumbed in the end.  That said we still get rain until the weekend, that I can live with, after that I need some sun to try and get some queens mated.

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## Rosie

I'm sorry to hear about your allotment problems Nellie but most of us are in the same boat - I don't have an ounce of honey this year and am banking everything on a decent heather crop.  However, every cloud has a silver lining and in my case my virgins have mated fairly successfuilly.  It's too early to tell yet but I am hoping that the awful conditions have helped my AMM drones at the expense of exotic ones.  As a fan of AMMs that should result in more pure matings than I have achieved in earlier years.

Steve

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## Jimbo

In the 12 years of beekeeping this has got to be my worst year. I think there will be no honey crop unless we get a really good spell of dry weather. My mating was a disaster with only 50% success. I am currently feeding sugar to help the newer hives that have mated. I lost some of my best Amm queens due to starvation while on holiday. One strong colony got through 2 supers of stores in 2 weeks while I was away, then starved. I am currently trying to cut my losses and at least have sone strong colonies going into the winter. And it is still pissing down.

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