Site for a hive?

[JamezF]

I think the other problem will be that we have an annex that we use as a holiday let. The guests are allowed to share the garden so it may be best for me to use the other site anyway.

Oddly enough I've had to move my apiary recently for an almost identical reason.

James

 

[JimBee463]

A bit of an update on my colony. They did well late last summer and into autumn after i'd moved them to my garden. I didn't get any honey from them but wasn't expecting to anyway.

They went into winter with plenty of stores (I did feed them a couple of litres of Invertbee, which they took down over a couple of weeks)

I've been keeping an eye on them periodically by having a listen at the back of the hive and did my OA trickle just before Christmas. They looked very happy and calm when I did the trickle treatment and still seemed to have a decent bit of weight, but I added some fondant above the crown board as a precautionary measure.

I've been out today doing some bits in the garden and noticed a fair bit of activity and, despite the temps being around 11 degrees today, they have been really busy all day and there is plenty of creamy yellow pollen coming into the hive, so they've obviously found something to forage on and are happy to be flying.

In the meantime i've been sorting out some 2nd hand Poly Nucs that I got hold of so that when the time comes to split next season i'll have the kit to do it (I do also have a spare full sized hive with supers). I've also been making some supers from timber I had in my workshop so i'm feeling fairly well prepared for the coming season.

I'm booked on an Improvers Course starting in a few weeks too so that should also help me through my first full season, hopefully

 

[Erichalfbee]

A bit of an update on my colony. They did well late last summer and into autumn after i'd moved them to my garden. I didn't get any honey from them but wasn't expecting to anyway.

They went into winter with plenty of stores (I did feed them a couple of litres of Invertbee, which they took down over a couple of weeks)

I've been keeping an eye on them periodically by having a listen at the back of the hive and did my OA trickle just before Christmas. They looked very happy and calm when I did the trickle treatment and still seemed to have a decent bit of weight, but I added some fondant above the crown board as a precautionary measure.

I've been out today doing some bits in the garden and noticed a fair bit of activity and, despite the temps being around 11 degrees today, they have been really busy all day and there is plenty of creamy yellow pollen coming into the hive, so they've obviously found something to forage on and are happy to be flying.

In the meantime i've been sorting out some 2nd hand Poly Nucs that I got hold of so that when the time comes to split next season i'll have the kit to do it (I do also have a spare full sized hive with supers). I've also been making some supers from timber I had in my workshop so i'm feeling fairly well prepared for the coming season.

I'm booked on an Improvers Course starting in a few weeks too so that should also help me through my first full season, hopefully

That all sounds great. You have a busy year ahead of you.

 

[Poly Hive]

Over many years and various groups this Q comes up pretty much every season and my answer is always the same. Do not keep bees at home. Whwy?

Sooner or later problems will happen. Some will say but I've kept bees at the house for x years with no problems. No doubt totally true. It's a law of averages situation and the problems will be far more than the successful outcomes. It's that simple. Bees sting and swarm and it is totally unreasonable to adversely affect your neighbours.

PH

 

[blackcloud]

Sooner or later problems will happen

Any colony can have a bad day but even then its easy to step into the path of a returning forager who may be too laden and exhausted to dodge .The collision will result in bees in hair and lots of screaming panic from both parties
Even a wasp sting can be blamed on you once civilians know you have bees.
Ive occasionally brought nuc-builds home but its always clandestine and they're gone again once up and running

 

[fian]

Any colony can have a bad day but even then its easy to step into the path of a returning forager who may be too laden and exhausted to dodge .The collision will result in bees in hair and lots of screaming panic from both parties
Even a wasp sting can be blamed on you once civilians know you have bees.
Ive occasionally brought nuc-builds home but its always clandestine and they're gone again once up and running

And for this reason in Spain there are a series of minimum distances between the apiary and other elements of use (homes, roads, or livestock facilities) that make it impossible for a beekeeper to have hives in the garden of his house.

 

[JimBee463]

Over many years and various groups this Q comes up pretty much every season and my answer is always the same. Do not keep bees at home. Whwy?

Sooner or later problems will happen. Some will say but I've kept bees at the house for x years with no problems. No doubt totally true. It's a law of averages situation and the problems will be far more than the successful outcomes. It's that simple. Bees sting and swarm and it is totally unreasonable to adversely affect your neighbours.

PH

Well, fortunately I live in a rural area and my closest neighbour is over 150m away, so i'm fairly confident the bees won't bother them too much and I won't be 'adversely affecting' them (we also have high Devon hedges and banks between properties). I get what you're saying and i'll just have to see how it goes, but for now they are in place at the bottom of my garden, with a 10' high hedge and bank to fly over (directly in front of the entrance) and fields in all directions bar to the rear of the hive.

Here's hoping for a good year

 

[JamezF]

Well, fortunately I live in a rural area and my closest neighbour is over 150m away, so i'm fairly confident the bees won't bother them too much and I won't be 'adversely affecting' them (we also have high Devon hedges and banks between properties).

Same here, though a couple of members of the local BKA kept some hives in a farmer's field adjoining our property, about 30m from our house. That turned out to be quite convenient though, as one of their swarms became my first ever colony

James

 

[pargyle]

It's perfectly possible to keep bees in urban gardens ... mine have been in our garden since I started beekeeping and I've had up to 9 colonies in my small apiary = but the important things are to get them up in the air. My apiary has a 6 foot wall on the side in the direction of where they mostly fly off and the other sides are bounded by a workshop, greenhouse and trees and a 6 foot fence. The main flightline of the bees is not in the direction of my neighbours (who all know I keep bees).

But .... I have experience of dealing with the hive from hell (not one of mine) and I think, if you do keep bees in gardens where they could impact on neighbours. then you need a Plan B which involves somewhere that you could relocate the bees, if needs be, at short notice. Colonies have off days and you can cope with that but a colony that guards a territory that includes everything within a 50 yard radius, all the time, is going to make you very unpopular if there is any chance of them interacting with people in the vicinity.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

It's perfectly possible to keep bees in urban gardens ... mine have been in our garden since I started beekeeping and I've had up to 9 colonies in my small apiary = but the important things are to get them up in the air. My apiary has a 6 foot wall on the side in the direction of where they mostly fly off and the other sides are bounded by a workshop, greenhouse and trees and a 6 foot fence. The main flightline of the bees is not in the direction of my neighbours (who all know I keep bees).

But .... I have experience of dealing with the hive from hell (not one of mine) and I think, if you do keep bees in gardens where they could impact on neighbours. then you need a Plan B which involves somewhere that you could relocate the bees, if needs be, at short notice. Colonies have off days and you can cope with that but a colony that guards a territory that includes everything within a 50 yard radius, all the time, is going to make you very unpopular if there is any chance of them interacting with people in the vicinity.

I've had bees at the top of the garden since I started beekeeping (I subsequently found out that the area I have the apiary was also where my uncle Rhys kept his bees after he retired from farming after the war and bought Brynmair) one of my neighbours didn't even realise for years that I had bees there until he built a Japanese water garden which the bees loved in the spring.
Get them flying high, and always have a fallback out apiary if needed.