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So we're here now to talk about hive location
and how to pick a good location to keep bees
and then once you've picked that location
how to raise the bees within the bee yard
or apiary.
It's ideal if you have southern exposure so
the bees get lots of sunlight,
full sunlight is preferable bees can put
in a longer work day in that way, and they
are nice and warm, they function well as a colony
when they are nice and warm.
It's ideal if you have wind protection all around.
As you can see around the yard here
we have protection on the east, the north and
again on the west and with good southern
exposure, so it's not a windy
location to keep the bees; that's ideal it's
not absolutely necessary.
If you are keeping bees in urban situations,
something you want to be considering is the
legislation that is in effect in the Bees Act.
In that legislation it states that you can't
keep bees closer than 30 meters to a property
line or 10 meters to a road allowance.
Those regulations are enforced on a complaint
basis so they're sometimes not adhered to but you
should be aware that that's what the legislation is.
Once you have a bee yard picked out you want to
think about how you place your bees within that
bee yard.
It's ideal to keep hives two together on a hive stand.
If you have two together then you always have
somewhere to set your smoker.
You can't underestimate the value of that
and you are able to work pretty efficiently
with hives since they are close together.
What we have our hives arranged in groups of six
with all the entrances facing into the middle.
That allows us if we want to smoke all six
hives at once just by turning around there
and then this is a no go area in the middle.
All the bees are flying in and out of there,
we can do our work from the side of the hive or from
the back of the hive and again there is always
somewhere to set the smoker.
With orientation like this each hive has a slightly
different orientation so that makes it easy for
them to navigate and find their way back home again.
We paint our hives multiple colours and that also helps
with them in finding their own homes.
A few more points that I could mention
if you have your bees in an area near a swimming
pool that could be an issue.
Bees will go to the closest water source that
they can find and if they start going to
swimming pools they pick up that chlorine
scent and that actually helps them communicate
where to go to find the water, so it can be a
significant problem, so you may need to provide
water in a bee yard if there are swimming pools nearby.
Another thing is laundry, if people are hanging their
clothes on the line and bees go out and defecate
that can be a problem as well.
So you want to keep them away from laundry and
away from any high traffic areas where there is a lot
of pedestrian activity so a nice quiet area is the
ideal spot to keep bees.
They're pretty adaptable they'll do pretty well just
about wherever you put them, but it needs to be
easily accessible for you, so you don't want to have
them in a wet spot, you don't want to have to
climb over a fence to get to them things like that
because you need to keep in mind bee keeping is
largely moving things around from one place
to another and it is often heavy things so you
want to make the bee yard as accessible as possible.
But that is it. You don't have to have a perfect place,
we're just mentioning all the ideal circumstances
Thanks for watching. See you next time.