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Siting a Beehive.
Where can I Site a Hive?
Where is my Apiary?
Siting a beehive, where do I site a bee hive, how do I determine where it should go? I'm thinking about beekeeping. What makes a good hive site?
I read very early on, in my beekeeping career, how to choose a good site for a hive. It had to have early morning sun, then shade in the middle of the day (because of the hot English Sun) and then evening sun.
When I went on holiday to Turkey, I saw many bee hives. They were out in the middle of fields, not a bit of shade in sight, the temperature was about 120° Fahrenheit. Clearly the bees are able to control their environment quite satisfactorily.
I've been beekeeping since about 1988 and if I had known then what I know now, I would have started keeping bees ten years earlier. At that time I lived in an urban area in the south of London. Certainly my location wasn't suitable to keep even one hive. In a situation like that it's usually fairly easy, when siting a beehive, to find someone nearby with a big back garden who would like the occasional jar of honey.
Siting a hive is the biggest factor. I often tell people that the site should be accessible my motor vehicle, you do not want to carry a heavy hive across a ploughed field, and should be out of sight of people.
I had a hive in a village garden, the lady next door knew I was a beekeeper because she bought honey from me. One day her 7 foot fence blew down and she was startled to see a hive just four feet from the fence. "How long has that been there?", she said. "About two years.", was my reply.
Because bees leaving the hive fly over any obstacle such as the fence and stay at that height until they reach their destination, as much as a mile and a half away, she had been blissfully gardening with my bees flying backwards and forward over her head making honey for me, and her.
To give her credit, once the fence was replaced she never mentioned it again and continued to buy my honey.
