Hive Location and Setup Descriptive Transcript

Summary: Paul Kelly, research and apiary manager, explains how to select and set up a hive location. 

00:00 - 00:26
[The video opens with footage of Paul Kelly using a bee smoker to puff spoke around a group of beehives. The text ÒHive Location and SetupÓ fades in. The video transitions to a montage of seven shots showcasing honey bees and different elements of the research centre, ending with footage of a bee taking off from a yellow flower as the logo for the Honey Bee Research Centre fades in.]

00:26 - 00:55
[Cut to wide shot of Paul Kelly in the apiary surrounded by beehives.] 

Paul Kelly: 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.

00:55 - 01:17
Paul: It's ideal if you have wind protection all around. [The camera shows trees surrounding apiary.] 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.

01:17 - 01:47
Paul: 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.

01:47 - 02:18
Paul: 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.

02:18 - 02:58
Paul: What we have our hives arranged in groups of six with all the entrances facing into the middle. [Camera zooms out to show the beehives reflecting the setup Paul describes.] That allows us if we want to smoke all six hives at once just by turning around there [Paul stands in the middle of the hive setup and smokes all of the hives by turning in a circle.] 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.

03:06 - 03:37
Paul: 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.

03:37 - 03:56
Paul: 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.

03:56 - 04:22
Paul: 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.

04:22 - 04:29
Paul: 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.