Photo Credit: Hive entrances can become quite busy in the late afternoon with returning foraging bees.
One of the most important things that you can do to ensure the success of your hives as well as your successes as a beekeeper is to ensure that you place your beehives in the proper location. This is just as important as keeping bees and should be considered prior to installing your bees in their permanent home. Season changes, climate, sunlight, and the elements are all things that can affect the bees and your ability to care for them. It is also much more difficult to move your hives to a different location during the middle of their foraging season. Here are some helpful tips before you set up your hives.
1. Sun or Shade or Both– Depending on where you live in the country and your temperatures in the height of summer, watch the hours of sunlight and when locations in your yard are in full sun. The hive should be placed in early morning sun. This gets the bees out of their hive earlier in the day to forage. In the Northeast, hives can remain in the full sun for the entire season. However in places with warmer climates, hives should receive some afternoon shade.
2. No direct wind– Hives should be placed in an area with a wind break such as a fence, shrubbery, trees or bushes. This is especially true in climates where temperatures drop below freezing. Northern facing sides of the hive should especially be protected in the winter in the northern United States. In the Northeast, hive entrances should optimally be faced south or southeast.
3. Space Between– Make sure you put proper space between the hives in order to work them. You should be able to comfortably walk between and around them.
Photo Credit: Hives can get quite tall in the height of the season requiring a ladder for access.
4. Perfect Height– Elevate your hives on cinder blocks or a platform to help keep ground moisture out and allow you work the hive without harm to your back. Elevated hives make for easier lifting. However, do not make the platform too high. You do not want the honey supers difficult to access during the foraging season.
5.Water Source– A water source should be nearby. This can be a birdbath or even a small water pot filled with pebbles for landing and water.
6. Facing Entrances– Face entrances in the opposite direction of foot traffic. The bees won’t mind and this helps to prevent the bees perceiving people and pets that walk in front of the hive entrances as potential threats.
7. Ease of Access– You should be able to see the hives and access them easily too. This helps you to provide the inspections and care that the hives requires.
Photo Credit: A fenced in apiary
8. Consider Predators– Check with your local agencies to determine if you have predators in the area such as skunks or bears. Electric or strong fencing may be required to ensure the safety of your hives.
Photos used under the Creative Commons licensing Agreement.
Tags
- bees
- hive placement
- tips
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26 Comments
olga ludvova says:
September 9, 2015 at 1:31 am
To mi chodi na muj inernet.
Vcely jsou prospesne pri opilovani kvetim a stomu, zvysuji vynos ovoce a zeleminy.
Med a propolis je prospesne pro zdravi.
Mira
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February 19, 2016 at 5:09 am
[…] Did you know you need to find a proper spot for your beehive! This is a great article on proper beehive placement.Link […]
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Jon says:
August 21, 2016 at 3:19 pm
I was thinking of putting my hives in the backyard corner of my property. It’s about 10 feet from my vegetable garden and about 30 feet from the backdoor of my house.
Is this too close? I’m afraid of the bees getting too close to. My kids who are under 7 years old. Thanks!
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Sw says:March 24, 2017 at 9:26 pm
30′ is fine until they turn defensive because of a dearth, drought, queen loss. One problem with this whole backyard craze is that people are not being reminded that bees sting people and sometimes hives turn aggressive. My hives are 100′ from my house, is wish they were a little farther than that.
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Sw 
Steven Fournier says:
September 18, 2016 at 3:08 pm
Can some one tell me the difference between a hive and a nuc
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- Don says:
November 11, 2016 at 10:26 pm
A nuc is a nucleus box – the smallest amount of frames you need to have to maintain a functional colony. Minimally, 1 honey/nectar frame, 1 pollen, 1 brood, 1 empty, 1 hatched. It usually has +/- one more. The ‘standard hive’ is usually larger – like 10 frames per Langstroth box, or a full size (3 foot long) top bar hive, etc. Often times, folks will say that nucs are funner than full size hives, because they are easier to manage, and might have 3,000 or 5,000 bees vs. 30,000 bees. Just less to worry about if they get riled up. They are also used (if they overwinter well) to be sold off for $125+ on the following Spring to bee keepers who want to get a head start over the package buyers. – Some also say that its far better (to help the honey bees as a whole) to buy a hygienic species of bees from a known breeder, rather than buying ‘last years mixed-lot of shaken bees’ in a package. Remember the nucs generally have overwintered as a unified hive with one queen rather than created from a combined lot of shaken bees from mixed hives. So generally speaking they know how to work better together, because they usually have been together for a month or so… not always true, but ask the dealer you’re purchasing them from. Just like teams of people that work together for years – the over wintered nuc colonies tend to explode in the Spring… (assuming you got them from a good breeder).
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Don Rota says:
November 11, 2016 at 10:02 pm
“Near-by water” is more critical than you think. In areas where there are droughts, the water issue is not about H2O for the bees to drink, but more about plants producing flowers with nectar. Therefore the bees won’t die because of low water since they can usually get morning dew or condensation on the inside of the hive, they die of starvation – because there is no nectar (dearth). The best advice I can give folks is to put hives in a place where there is a natural meadow or conservation land that has fields, next to pond or a year-round stream/spring – so the flora will support better food. – Or as I do – water your flower gardens after hours (or use a drip system) when there’s a drought. The more water you give your flowers, the more nectar they’ll produce for the bees. If, in August, your hives are very light, and they have little honey in reserve, then you’ll need to feed the heck out of them if you want them to store enough for Winter. If you have not given them enough food by October, there’s not much you can do at that point, to help them get through the Winter. (“Feed the bees that feed the bees that feed the bees that go through Winter.”) Starving bees make poor nurses. And you want to get ahead of the curve and make sure the earlier generations of nurse bees are well fed, so that the Winter bees have good food and excellent care.
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Don says:
November 11, 2016 at 10:15 pm
One other thing that our local Apiary instructor/Beekeeper said – “If I have 20 hives or 10 hives in the same location – I’ll get the same amount of honey out of the total group of hives”…. So, in short – for most “average areas” (residential neighborhoods, etc.) Its probably better to have 10 or less hives. Now, if you have a honey bee paradise with densely packed wild flowers, meadows or flowering trees (that create major nectar flows all Spring/Summer and Fall) for 2 or 3+ sq miles, then you can probably saturate with 20 hives and get better results. But overall, he seemed to think that 10 hives was a good number for your average flora area. (He has over 300 hives, and 20+ years of experience, so I think that’s reasonable advice.)
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Wayne says:
May 1, 2017 at 2:00 pm
I thinking to put the hive on the roof of the garage
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Taffy says:
May 18, 2017 at 1:23 pm
Don’t forget to place hives at least 300 meters from any sources of RF EMF radiation – including smart meters, cell towers, wifi routers, etc. RF EMF can impede bees’ ability to navigate; thousands have been found next to the hive only to be “unable” to find the entrance and died in the process. Take a stand against 5G rollout which will increase RF EMF saturation in every neighborhood everywhere. RF EMF radiation also harms birds (navigational magnetite) as well as frogs, butterflies, etc. for more: http://www.electronicsilentspring.com/primers/wildlife/wireless-devices-wildlife/
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- Robert Fulton says:
May 19, 2017 at 8:38 pm
so would a farraday cage help as it blocks many radio signals and electronic pulses ?
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Robert Fulton Taffy says:
May 18, 2017 at 1:27 pm
Among thousands of studies that show RF EMF impacts biological organisms (bees, birds, humans!), it was shown that placing a cell phone next to a hive caused all the bees to die.
In Bees, Birds and Mankind: Effects of Wireless Communication Technologies (Kentum, 2009), German scientist Ulrich Warnke states, “Bees and other insects, just as birds, use the Earth’s magnetic field and high frequency electromagnetic energy such as light. They accomplish orientation and navigation by means of free radicals as well as a simultaneously reacting magnetite conglomerate. Technically produced electromagnetic oscillations in the MHz range and magnetic impulses in the low frequency range persistently disturb the natural orientation and navigation mechanisms created by evolution.”
In his book, Warnke quotes Ferdinand Ruzicka, a scientist and beekeeper who reported, in 2003, after several transmitters (cellular antennas) were erected in the immediate vicinity of his hives: “I observed a pronounced restlessness in my bee colonies (initially about forty) and a greatly increased urge to swarm. As a frame-hive beekeeper, I use a so-called high floor. The bees did not build their combs in the manner prescribed by the frames, but in random fashion. In the summer, bee colonies collapsed without obvious cause. In the winter, I observed that the bees went foraging despite snow and temperatures below zero, and they died of cold next to the hive. Colonies that exhibited this behavior collapsed, even though they were strong, healthy colonies with active queens before winter. They were provided with adequate additional food and the available pollen was more than adequate in autumn.”
Ruzicka then organized a survey of beekeepers through the magazine Der Bienen Vater. All twenty of the beekeepers who replied to his questionnaire had a transmitter within 300 meters of their beehives. Compared to the bees’ behavior before and after the transmitters were in operation, 37.5% observed increased aggression from their bees.
25% found that their bees had a greater tendency to swarm.
65% reported that their colonies were inexplicably collapsing since the transmitters became operational.
Warnke says that monocultures, pesticides, the Varroa mite, migratory beekeeping, dressed seed, severe winters, and genetically modified seeds could also explain the bee colonies’ collapse. However, none of these convincingly explains “the fairly sudden and country-spanning appearance two to three years ago of the dying bees phenomenon. Should the bees simply be too weak or ill, they should also die in or near the hive. But no ill bees were found in research into this phenomenon.”
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Taffy says:
May 18, 2017 at 1:28 pm
It was also shown that placing a cell phone next to a hive killed all the bees.
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Michael says:
May 19, 2017 at 4:38 am
Interesting suggestions regarding placement.
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Nyasha says:
August 30, 2017 at 10:12 am
Message*Normally how big should a single entrance of a beehive be?
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kobugabe fatihah says:
November 15, 2017 at 5:31 am
Hello there. thank yyou for an outstanding job your are doing as far as bees are concerned,.i too, iam working with an organisation promoting bees in the northern part of the country.However there is a a very big challenge of blank ants,wax moths as well as sugar ants.my request is to know how best we can eradicate those pests.Thank you
Kind regards
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Stacey says:
March 16, 2018 at 9:39 pm
Hi there,
I’m brand new to beekeeping and I am getting 2 hives this spring. I live in central Canada and I’m a zone 4. My property is relatively shady and the only places with full sun are around my house, i.e veggie garden, chicken coop and fire pit area. so the place I’m planning on putting these new hives is more shady then part shade. with the entrances of the hives pointing east. minimal morning sun. what do you think? do you think they’ll be OK?
Thanks 🙂
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- Keeping Backyard Bees says:
March 20, 2018 at 2:02 pm
Hi Stacey,
The placement isn’t ideal, but people have done more than less. Take into consideration that once the bees orient themselves to their hive location you should only move them a)two feet or b)two miles.
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Frank says:
June 26, 2018 at 9:24 am
Thank you very much editor for the nice tips on “proper bee hive placement tips” they are nice and road tool to those who iam to start bee keeping like me. Im gonna start a beekeeping soon since i pass to your site keeps me on going motion to my targert. Im from Arusha, Tanzania.
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Melita says:
June 6, 2019 at 11:19 am
Can you place bee hive underneath an oak tree of at edge for shade they are bearing in Florida its extra hot early this year
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John says:
November 20, 2019 at 4:38 pm
What am I supposed to do to the beehive before I place it where I’ve planned?
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Traci G says:
April 23, 2020 at 7:11 pm
Is it safe to place my new Beehive near my horse pasture? From what I have been reading, this is the only location on my property that fits all the criteria. Thank you!
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idris muraina says:
November 26, 2020 at 8:02 pm
I am a new beekeeper, I love to improve with guidelines, to make my dream come through as professional beekeeper
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Kami says:
March 10, 2021 at 12:22 am
I’m wanting to put a hive on my property. I think I’ve got a good spot, according to these guidelines, thought maybe closer than the 50 ft recommendation. I have fruit trees, fruit bushes, flowers and veggie plots so I’d love some little buzzy helpers. Any other suggestions for a first time keeper ?
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Michael Webb says:
March 28, 2021 at 1:54 am
I live along a river and no worries about water.
1. Is there alot of maintenance, how much time is needed?
2. Are birds or bats an issue?
3. I dont have alot of room on my lot, but a cover to protect from sun and wind is what I am worried about. Do you have any pictures of any open field hives in the south?
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Thabo says:
May 20, 2021 at 3:37 pm
Good day
I’m interested to keep the bees but I don’t know where can I get something to attract them. Please help. I’m in KZN in Mtubatuba.
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