John Berry on Beehives in the Wrong Places

Whether it's public nuisance, bad access, or just an unproductive spot, Hawke’s Bay beekeeper John Berry has witnessed many poorly-located beehives through the years (some, on reflection, his own!). He shares what he’s learnt, and some best-practice dos and don’ts.

By John Berry

I have seen some pretty stupid apiary sites over the years. I don’t believe any beekeepers deliberately set out to endanger the public, but plenty unwittingly do. 

Beehives should only be placed on farmland after consultation with the landowner, and a safe distance away from farm infrastructure such as stock handling facilities or gates.

Bees sting. People don’t like being stung. People can even die from bee stings. This is a sad and tragic reality and while you cannot remove every risk, you can do a lot to minimise it. 

Urban

Let’s start with in town. In an urban setting it is impossible to keep your hives far away from people.

The main things you can do to mitigate risk is to keep only a small number of hives and to position them in a spot where they are forced to gain height before they leave your property. Once bees are above head height they are generally not a problem, apart from their propensity to poo on the neighbour’s car.

Ideally the spot will also be sheltered and sunny as this can have quite an effect on the bees’ temperament. You would think that being in the shade would be natural for bees given they live in hollow trees, but I have found them to be much quieter when kept in full sun. Having a quiet strain of bee is also important, as is only working hives in good weather and not too early or late in the day. 

The more hives you have, the longer it takes to work them all and the more upset they will be. 

I’m not trying to put people off urban beekeeping. Urban beekeepers play an essential part in the urban food forest and a lot of people get a lot of enjoyment from them. Just do it responsibly. I have seen some amazing urban hives over the years, but also a few shockers. 

They are your bees that you wanted, so keep them close to you, not close to your neighbour.

Rural

Rural and semirural are where the majority of hives are found. I have always had a policy of not putting hives too close to any urban areas. For one thing this gives hobbyists somewhere to keep their hives in peace and also because these areas have historically always been potential hotspots for American foulbrood (AFB). It’s pretty simple really, the more beekeepers in an area, the more likely one of them will not have the necessary knowledge and skills to deal with AFB before it spreads. 

I have seen apiaries placed in almost any situation you can imagine, ranging from areas prone to flooding, to in a saddle next to a windfarm.

Flooding can be a hard one. I have placed apiaries myself in places I thought were perfectly safe only to be proven wrong. If you think an area might flood, it probably will. If you’ve been flooded, don’t put them back.

Placing hives right beside public roads, foot paths, cycleways or the like is something that has always annoyed me, yet it has become almost common practice. Placing bees beside a road not only unnecessarily endangers passing members of the public, it can also take a very heavy toll on your beehives with every passing car taking out numerous bees.

If I can’t find a safe site then I won’t put bees on a property. What is safe obviously depends on many things including how busy a road is and, most especially, how much foot traffic there is. Even if my bees are nowhere near a road I still try and keep them as far away from any farming infrastructure as possible, and the bigger the apiary the more important this is. I once moved a site because the bees were landing on the farmer’s wife’s washing and she was extremely allergic. The bees were nowhere near the house, but in spring they had a flight path directly over it. Moving to a different paddock solved the problem.

In dry conditions bees can also be a problem around farmers’ swimming pools and even dogs’ water bowls. It’s their farm and your problem, not the other way round. I did once have a big bush site just inside a gate, but this was at the request of the farmer who never used it and liked the bees there because they deterred poachers. 

The bottom line for me is, would you want your kids walking or riding past while you are working the bees? 

It goes without saying that you should have permission from the landowner or manager to put the bees anywhere. This has been a major problem in some areas. Fortunately this is not the majority or even a large minority of beekeepers, but even one is one too many and I have seen a lot more than that.

If a hive site floods, don’t test your luck by putting hives back there again says John Berry.

Pollination

Pollination hives are generally not a problem and normal practice is to place the hives where the orchardist wants them, however it does no harm to offer a bit of advice. There have been some serious incidents over the years with hives being hit by sprayers and mowers and, in at least one case, a pallet of hives being cut completely in half by a hedge trimmer.

Bees will do a better job placed centrally in an orchard and a nice warm, sheltered sunny spot. Spreading around all over the place into every dark, shaded corner the orchardist can find doesn’t help the pollination or the beehives. In the big orchards you do have to spread them around a bit, but be very careful especially in large kiwifruit orchards, where every block is identical, because many bees will get lost looking for their hives in the neighbouring blocks. It’s far better to have them in a few groups in places like loading bays.

Bees are very good at finding the way home, but when they get close to home they switch to visual and orchards can be a very confusing place for them. 

Finally, I would like to raise the subject of making sure that where you put your bees isn’t right on top of someone else. This doesn’t generally endanger the public, but it does endanger good working relationships between neighbouring beekeepers.

I have personally been severely affected by this and I have had friends driven out of beekeeping because their businesses became uneconomic due to overstocking. Neither party wins from that sort of situation.

I have even on several occasions seen apiaries placed under a kilometre from honey houses. In one case a huge dumpsite. During the robbing season you couldn’t open a door for more than a few seconds. It is just such a thoughtless thing to do and I can’t for the life of me see what anyone could gain from doing it. 

The vast majority of beekeepers’ hives are on someone else’s land and keeping good relations with farmers, the general public, neighbours, fellow beekeepers and even local bodies and government is, or should be, just a normal part of beekeeping. 

John Berry is a retired commercial beekeeper from the Hawke’s Bay, having obtained his first hive in 1966, before working for family business Arataki Honey and then as owner of Berry Bees. He now keeps “20-something” hives.