Architecture student researching bees

[Chris B]

Do you find, in your own expeience, that there is much variance from year to year?

Yes definitely. My worst average was around 20lb, my best 135lb. The honey producing season is quite short really, so weather variations can have quite a big effect.

 

[theeggman]

to the forum l'amour.

I stand to be corrected by the more experienced beeks on here but you may get a conflict between the bees and the other users of the site.
Assuming you really meant 600 square mts and not 600 mts. square it is not a very large plot to have food production (allotmenteers?) and leisure users and beehives, when the bees get annoyed, during inspections etc. the other users may get grief.

Good luck.

Late edit: If you have too small a space for honeybees could you incorporate nest sites for bumbles and solitary bees in your building?

 

[user 6228]

Would I be right to assume a radius of 20-30 metres is too close?

Thanks for the answers, by the way.

honeybees will go forage as little as 5m to forage or as far as 5000m
however what appear to attract them is large expanses of flowers yielding very high sugar content nectar
10 bees in one square metre of flowers is exceptional(own observations). if you have 20,000 foragers in a colony thats 2000 m2 and could be orders of magnitude largerarea

Others chip in if these numbers appear too far out

 

[madasafish]

I have 11 hives in a semi rural garden. The bees forage on poppies within 1 meter of the hives and in big oriental poppies with lots of pollen you can see 4-5 bees on one flower.. see the pink poppy on the left...

If you have buddleia trees,ceanothus, cotoneaster or other bee friendly tree, you can have hundreds if not thousands of bees working the flowers on the tree.... the sound on a hot summer's day is enchanting. Also lime and chestnut trees have the same effect when in flower.

 

[Gilberdyke John]

I have 11 hives in a semi rural garden. The bees forage on poppies within 1 meter of the hives and in big oriental poppies with lots of pollen you can see 4-5 bees on one flower.. see the pink poppy on the left...

If you have buddleia trees,ceanothus, cotoneaster or other bee friendly tree, you can have hundreds if not thousands of bees working the flowers on the tree.... the sound on a hot summer's day is enchanting. Also lime and chestnut trees have the same effect when in flower.

As I understand it honeybees have no interest in common buddleia. The globus variety however does attract them. I've never seen any of my bees on buddleia nor for that matter on cotoneaster on site. Lime and Chestnut yes subject to weather conditions

 

[theeggman]

Our cotoneaster is alive with honeybees and bumbles whilst it's in flower + b***dy wasps.

 

[masterBK]

Honeybees work the common buddleias in my garden and often outnumber the butterflies on them.

 

[madasafish]

As I understand it honeybees have no interest in common buddleia. The globus variety however does attract them. I've never seen any of my bees on buddleia nor for that matter on cotoneaster on site. Lime and Chestnut yes subject to weather conditions

Someone needs to educate my bees.
All over common buddleia = and globula ones as well. My cotoneaster bushes (4 meters tall and growing! ) buzz with bees. May depend on the type of plant..

 

[Gilberdyke John]

Someone needs to educate my bees.
All over common buddleia = and globula ones as well. My cotoneaster bushes (4 meters tall and growing! ) buzz with bees. May depend on the type of plant..

Maybe my bees are just fussy or there is more tempting forage around for them to work.

 

[madasafish]

Maybe my bees are just fussy or there is more tempting forage around for them to work.

Probably the latter. No arable farming within 5 miles here.

 

[l'amour]

Yes definitely. My worst average was around 20lb, my best 135lb. The honey producing season is quite short really, so weather variations can have quite a big effect.

Ok. Do you recall the conditions when you took your best?

 

[l'amour]

to the forum l'amour.

I stand to be corrected by the more experienced beeks on here but you may get a conflict between the bees and the other users of the site.
Assuming you really meant 600 square mts and not 600 mts. square it is not a very large plot to have food production (allotmenteers?) and leisure users and beehives, when the bees get annoyed, during inspections etc. the other users may get grief.

Good luck.

Late edit: If you have too small a space for honeybees could you incorporate nest sites for bumbles and solitary bees in your building?

Thanks for the welcome!
Possible conflict is something that had crossed my mind. The site, currently scrap of wasteland, has a path trodden through the middle connecting two roads which I will retain (And yeah 600 square metres, sorry typo) so I was cosidering a sort of buffer zone of trees and taller bushes between the hive area and rest of site that would (hopefully) cause the bees to fly above head height when off on their merry travels.

Here is a diagram:

 

[l'amour]

honeybees will go forage as little as 5m to forage or as far as 5000m
however what appear to attract them is large expanses of flowers yielding very high sugar content nectar
10 bees in one square metre of flowers is exceptional(own observations). if you have 20,000 foragers in a colony thats 2000 m2 and could be orders of magnitude largerarea

Others chip in if these numbers appear too far out

Ok, so the more places for forage the better. I don't have anything like 2000 square metres but there are other, limited, areas with planting within 500m.

 

[Chris B]

Ok. Do you recall the conditions when you took your best?

2003. Nice sustained warm spring and summer basically. Bees made honey from April to August without much of a gap. Average years have the "June gap" and then finish around end of July.
(2013 and 2014 have been good summers but not so good in spring)

 

[dpearce4]

these publications by the university of sussex may be of interest to you:-

https://www.sussex.ac.uk/webteam/ga...ping-bees-in-urban-areas-bbj-1-16.pdf&site=60

https://www.sussex.ac.uk/webteam/ga...eks-etal-beecraft-honeybeesreturn.pdf&site=60

 

[l'amour]

these publications by the university of sussex may be of interest to you:-

https://www.sussex.ac.uk/webteam/ga...ping-bees-in-urban-areas-bbj-1-16.pdf&site=60

https://www.sussex.ac.uk/webteam/ga...eks-etal-beecraft-honeybeesreturn.pdf&site=60

Thanks, very useful.

 

[dpearce4]

they have been doing some very interesting work over the last couple of years looking at the waggle dance and seeing from that where bees are foraging. its not finished but they have published some of the information here.

https://www.sussex.ac.uk/webteam/ga...14-waggle-dance-decoding-bbj-1-17.pdf&site=60