There are several factors in bee yard layout. You must take these factors in account or you could easily starve your bees to death. You need a steady, seasonal influx of nectar and pollen to feed the larva and create a storage of excess honey for Winter survival. In this first photo you will see a wishing well to the center left. Behind there are C1 and C2, my experimental colonies for the 2001 beekeeping season. 12 feet in front of the hive is the sidewalk and mailbox. Directly behind the hive is the property line and my neighbors yard and home. This works well for me because I have followed my own number one rule: teach your neighbors to respect the bees space, but more importantly they should understand the benefits of the colonies to their own plants and trees.

The bees must be busy by nature to stay healthy. A total dead period where there is NO crop to harvest causes poor hive health and irregular breeding patterns. When deciding the size of your yard or the number of colonies, it's important to understand the food sources in you area. A talk with a local beekeeper often will give you an idea of what to expect. Also a local agriculture or county parks department can often answer questions on plant life.

You must think of the hive as a single machine. The queen and workers are uniquely bound in mission to both expand the size of the colony and to also create a supportive food store for the following Winter. It's your job as the beekeeper to make this seasonal transition as seamless as possible. In most parts of the East, we have a lull in nectar and pollen flows during Mid-Summer. This is also the time that most of my bees decide to swarm - thus creating MORE bees to feed in a time when food resources are short. Think of this type of situation and use it to determine hive count on your property.

Swarming concerns and hive division is important too. I have had as many as 7 hives at the same location against my neighbors fence. It didn't start out seven, it started out one hive and a nuc, but good queens can turn your small yard of bees into a small city of bees towering over the picket fence. So don't think that you are ready for every seasons miraculous events. Honeybees are prolific by nature and they can be a handful to control. Trying to prevent swarming by adding empty supers to the existing hives sounds great, but often require careful observation and sometimes a vacation or a few days of being "Too busy" to work on the hives leads to problems or at least to unwanted spin-offs from the main hives. For more on swarming please read my  Swarm capturing section.

I always love emails from people with 20 and 30 acres of land who ask whether that can safely have bees on their property. My property is 110 ft X 60 ft and in the heart of a residential area. My neighbors are fascinated by the bees and their kids know the rules, and stay behind the front gate to watch. But they do watch and quite often. Getting your neighbors involved to some degree, takes the mystery and the fear out of many peoples minds and makes your job as a hobby beekeeper and a good neighbor that much easier.

Yard Size

I live on a relatively small property in central New Jersey. Shown behind me in this photo is my neighbors yard and his driveway. I keep my bees right on the property line and only feet from my sidewalk and mailbox. It's not how much space you have, it's more like how much room you can dedicate to the bees flight zone. Here you see about 20 feet from the neighbor's driveway and the space between the driveway and bees serves as a garden space, so it's rarely walked through. Keeping an eye on the usage of a small property can often tell you if it's a good place for bees or not.

To determine how many colonies I can support, I must look to my local area for viable and seasonal food crops. Luckily here we have several crops that are bountiful to the bees. Here we have blueberry fields and cranberry bogs and also many lily pads to draw nectar and pollen from. All these crops are with in a 2 mile square area, which is very important. Honeybees will travel further, but two miles is a good gauge for the outer travel bounds.

You must think of the bee as a small jet plane using a large amount of it's collected nectar as fuel during the flight. The further away from it's home, the more the bee will consume as fuel during her flight home. Thus, closer crops will yield greater surplus honey. Pollen is different because the bee is carrying the pollen on her rear legs and is burning fuel consumed on the trip, mainly nectar as she packs the pollen on her legs.

She will consume enough nectar to fuel her flight home, but only enough for the trip. Her main concern is the pollen which is packed on her legs and being returned to the hive for larva food and usually short term food storage. Pollen is yellow, red, orange and sometimes white balls packed on a small spine on the bees rear legs.

Food and Location Concerns

So you need to determine that you have a sunny location that receives early morning sun and a way in which to face the colony East if possible. The reason for this is that bees live in a totally dark environment and use the suns light breaching the hives entrance as a wake up call for morning flight. A colony in a sunny location will have as much as two hour advantage each morning over a colony that is placed in a heavily shaded area.

What does this mean? Well, lets think nectar, the liquid gathered in flowers and plants. This liquid is often a combination of dew and natural liquids found in the flower. In the early morning, the quantity of the nectar is at it's most voluptuous state. As the sun rises and evaporation begins, less nectar can be collected from any source. So the number of trips that the bees make are greatly increased as the normal daily evaporation depletes the amount of nectar available.

This is no more prevalent than in Lily pads. During the morning, the water plants are trumpets filled with large amounts of nectar. By 10 am on a warmer day, there is nothing there to collect. A colony which had an early flight start will have 4 solid hours of collecting compared to a colony that just got started at 10 am, because the sun finally breached the entrance.

Beyond The Hobbyist

The term "Big" is a relative term that can easily be over used here. To many of us, big is a dozen or so hives taking up every square inch of our small yards. To others, big may not begin until a 1000 hives produce 70,000 pounds of honey a season. The important issue is: how big is comfortable and affordable for you. 

A small backyard hobbyist ( like me ) usually has about a thousand bucks in equipment and hopefully all the passion of a big honey producer. The real advantage of a bigger operation is that you can switch and exchange hive parts from field to field and you almost always have bees readily available to rebirth a strong colony. Of course upkeep on such weather beaten equipment would shock us silly if we ever saw what it takes to be a surviving honey producer in the United States today.

I have a modest 8 supers, 2 queen excluders, a pollen trap and a few feeder jars to take on a whole new season of beekeeping. Please read my digital logbook to follow me throughout the Spring 2001 Beekeeping Season. Many folks buy or inherit hives from family, friends or local beekeepers. I really think that this is a great way to start on a shoestring budget. The obvious caveat is that you might be buying someone else's troubles. 

Again, you need to weigh every possible trouble or concern before you jump into beekeeping. Where you will have the hives, how often you can spend with them, is the location a danger to neighbors or pets, what about water concerns and a million other questions should be addressed by you. I hope this has been helpful.