Ideas for bee fence/bee blind

[cinch123]

I would like to put a couple hives on my suburban wooded lot. I have a very nice place to put them, right on the property line, but I want to minimize the chance that my neighbors will be in the flight path when they are mowing. Reading around, it seems that I can accomplish this by making some kind of fence 6 feet high around the bee yard so they fly up and out from there. For those of you who have done this, can you post a picture of yours? I want to avoid having it look like a big box at the back of my yard.Will a trellis with a climbing vine on it work?

[Sundog]

My yard is naturally surrounded by trees and stuff.  There is a flowing creek in the back (behind the dog's fence) with scrub oaks along it and I have several live oaks in the yard and in the front yard.  The bees leave the hive and go up high through a hole in the trees above the house, and you better not stand in their flight path or you will get boinked repeatedly. 

Watch and see where they leave and return from, it may not be the issue you think.  If they do fly low across your neighbor's patio, I thnk a trellis with some vegetation should help.  You could also try turning the hive so the entrance points away from the direction you don't want them to go.  I think bees as a rule forage away from the hive rather than in the immediate area.

My neighbors haven't complained, they share my enthusiasm and wish they could have hives too, and it helps if you share a jar of honey with them.

Good luck, and have fun!

[CapnChkn]

Yep!  Bees will fly around anything in their path, unless there's a bunch of space in it.  You might have a better chance with a hedge than a trellis.  Like most everybody, bees go for the quickest and most efficient way, and if they see a hole to get through, they will.

[BeeMaster2]

You would be supprised what will cause the bees to climb and avoid. I put my bees in the pasture behind my farm house. I kept the cows out the first couple of weeks knowing my bull would knock them over. Then I put up a 6 foot chain link fence around the hives. The fence was 4 feet from the front of the hives. While I was putting it up the bees piled up on the outside like it was a solid barrier. Some of them would land on it and then fly to the hive. Most of the time they go over it. They treat it like it is a solid barrier. Some will fly through it but not that many.
Jim

[Helmuthd]

My hive openings faces South West, and my bees used to come straight out of the hive and fly directly across my backyard.  It would usually take them 25 feet or so before they would get up above 6 feet.  We were having a summer BBQ, and we didn't want the bees to come out and start bumping into people, so we put up this simple trellis.  Within a day of two, all the bees changed their flight path!  Good news.  
The trellis is placed about four feet from the front of the hive, so I have plenty of room to work.  The gaps in the trellis are two inches wide, which the bees don't seem to fly through.

[cinch123]

The photo you posed above is what I'm considering doing. If I use that standard wood trellis I can at least plant something the climbs on it, like cucumbers or trumpet vine or something. 

[LoriMNnice]

The photo you posed above is what I'm considering doing. If I use that standard wood trellis I can at least plant something the climbs on it, like cucumbers or trumpet vine or something. 

I don't have bees yet but I have that kind of wood lattice trellis for my morning glorys and they grow very well on it and are still flowering now even after our first frost plus they are easy to grow. I would suggest some posts buried in the ground to attach trellis to because any viney plant gets heavy, but I am sure you probably knew that :)

[CapnChkn]

Well it looks like I'll have to revise what I thought true!  When I got here the barn was overgrown all all sides with a colony in one side of it.  The bees would fly through the brush to get out.

[T Beek]

My hives face south.  Behind them is a 6 1/2 ' wood fence.  Surrounding hives and wood fence is a 4 ' electric BEAR fence. 

To entice bees to fly above the 4 ' electric at the front I just put another (non-electric) line above it making it 6 '. 

Bees really do fly above it instead of through it, for the most part anyway.  (We grow hops on the wood fence).

thomas