IN THE FIELD
How to rightsize your animal numbers
Now is the time of the year when some smallholders become aware that they have more livestock on their plot than they should have. The grazing is finished and having to buy
BEEKEEPING
From page 19 assistants. For transport, up to 50 hives one needs a trailer. ❑ 50 to 200 hives one needs a bakkie to transport one helper plus 24 hives. ❑ 200 to 700 hives one needs a runabout bakkie plus a three ton truck to transport two helpers plus 48 hives as one would need to migrate the bees. ❑ 200 to 300 hives one needs to migrate 30 % of the hives, ❑ 300 to 700 hives one needs to migrate 60 % of the swarms. To manage the undertaking; in fodder is expensive. We have a responsibility to measure our stocking rate according to the carrying capacity of our pastures.“ Stocking rate” means the number of animals on a given
one must keep good records of honey yields, migrating times and any items that affects the running of the outfit with a view of always improving the beekeeping the following year. In this regard one needs to cull the weak swarms to avoid passengers that are not producing and one needs to keep a check on ages of queens. The value of good sites is the basis of a good undertaking, and a good beekeeper is always on the lookout for a better site and building into the annual operation a sitetesting programme with a few amount of land over a certain period of time.“ Carrying capacity” or grazing capacity is the number of animals that your fields will support for a specified length of time or indefinitely. It is
colonies. He should set targets and try to adhere to them, but failing to reach these targets can be miserable for the beekeeper and the undertaking becomes agrind. This situation must not develop but he should rather look for the weak points and ways to improve. The success of these improvements will give the beekeeper great joy and a motivation to do things better next time and he will always start the next day with a spring in his step. Call Peter Clark, Eastern Highveld Beekeepers Association, tel 011 362-2904 calculated in terms of animal units. Establishing the correct carrying capacity on a smallholding is not easy, given the variability of the factors to be considered. In order to assess the grazing capacity of our fields, we can look at the area of land required to maintain a single animal unit( AU) over an extended number of years without deterioration of the vegetation or soil. The capacity of the natural pastures of South Africa to carry stock is so low that generally the applied stocking rate on any section of land allocated to a particular flock of sheep or herd of cattle is usually expressed as x- number of hectares per livestock unit. This is as opposed to some countries where the ratio is given as x – number of AU per hectare.“ Animal unit”( AU) or
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