Good question
When you try to find good information on this topic, you get a variety of answers and most articles focus on one piece of the puzzle – probably what the author is most passionate about. I do understand it’s hard to look at this from a macro perspective, but I think it is important to do so.
I derived this list about basic bee needs from https://www.perfectbee.com/your-beehive/beehives-and-accessories/what-bees-need.
- A Place to Breed and Store Resources
- Foraging Resources
- Water
- Dryness
- Ventilation
- Warmth
- Calm Air
- Protection from Sun
I will address some of these items below. Some of the items such as calm air, dryness, and ventilation are beyond the capability of the beekeeper to change.
A Place to Breed and Store Resources
Bees are incredibly adapt about finding places to set up a colony. In nature, they will find a suitably-sized and oriented space, a hollowed out tree is a common example. I am sure that the Layens hives we built are adequate for the job. By the way, good hive design helps with dryness and ventilation.
Foraging Resources
The topics below are items I can directly affect.
Trees
Linda and I live on a 5 acre lot in south-central Callaway County, Missouri, surrounded by a least another 100 acres of woodland. About half the lot is open and the rest is typical Ozarks woodland. This means that there is a mixture of white oak, black oak, hickory, maple, black walnut, more cedars than I can count, and a few honey locust. There is also an abundance of redbud, dogwood, and a few wild plum trees. All of these trees, with the exception of the cedars, are good sources of pollen for bees and other insects. A good resource for further research can be found at this link: https://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/gardens-gardening/your-garden/help-for-the-home-gardener/advice-tips-resources/visual-guides/native-plants-to-attract-bees.
Wild flowers and berries
In addition to trees the woods provide an abundant number and types of wildflowers and berries. We have too many wildflowers growing on the property and surrounding area to name. There are numerous plots of wild blackberry and gooseberry. All of them have pollen that is used by bees and other insects.
Off the property there are two more places where a large selection of wildflowers grow. One is the state’s right away of the paved road we live on. It is 10 feet on each side and only gets mowed, unless by property owners, twice a year. Our road is about 6 miles long. That translates into a lot of flowers. The other is an easement used by Callaway Electric Cooperative and maybe Ameren. The easement borders our property and is very wide. It may get brush hogged once a year. It is full of wildflowers and blackberry bushes.
What we decided to do
Earlier in the summer of 2022, we decided to start a wildflower garden. It is very small but functional. Later in the year we decided to tidy up the property a bit and cut back several areas where the cedar trees are out of control. In all honesty, our son Curtis suggested cutting down one area and planting a weeping willow. We started project that in the summer of 2022 and finished getting the trees down in the fall. There are at least two more areas to clear off and plant wildflowers. When the new flower gardens are planted, there will be a post about them.
Water
This is one resource that I think is adequate. We have a large koi pond that is usually open from the end of April through the end of October. If the pond is not available, there is a pond across the road from our location and a “wet weather spring” in the valley along the property that usually has some water in it all year.
Protection from the sun
The hive will provide protection from the sun, but there is a larger discussion about the sun that needs to take place.
When I first started planning this project out, I thought I had the perfect place for the apiary. It was accessible with a building close by to store supplies, and it looked nice. Then the summer of 2022 happened with multiple reports of comb collapse. This link has a good discussion on the topic along with his recommendations to prevent it from happening. The short answer is to place the hives in the shade.
The conventional wisdom has been to place the hives in an area with full sun coverage. The idea behind this is control of small hive beetles. A discussion of this idea is found at this link: https://www.pineywoodsbeekeepers.org/articles/controlling-small-hive-beetles.
The original area for the apiary was going to be in full sun. But there is the risk of comb collapse. If they are put in the shade there is the risk of small hive beetles. This will require some more thought.
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