Enlighten us. is the hive to be on the south-east or north-west side?
RAB
Funny enough, I was thinking exactly the same thought; it's all relative. A South facing fence is, by definition, to your North. Your South facing fence is probably your neighbour's North facing fence.
A).
If the fence is to the North and West of the hive it will get early morning sun from the East and the South, which if unimpeded is excellent.
B).
If the fence is to the South and East of the fhve it will get late afternoon sun from the West. The sun's elevation increases as we move towards the summer, and so the shadows cast by buildings etc. will have slightly less effect.
I have included a table of sun azimuth for the first half of 2010, which might be of minor interest to see how far to the North the sun gets before it goes down. In my location the sun disappears over my Western horizon at around 6 degrees.