Hive Location

Pintado · Hive Location

I've been checking out places to put my first hives. The best location on my land is ideal except there some big trees around and I think it's going to get a lot of shade. How detrimental is this? I know some people say it is and some say it isn't. I'd like to hear your thoughts on the matter. Thanks in advance.

euman

How much shade is "a lot of shade"? If they are only getting sun when it's directly overhead from 11-1, that's not great. They will survive, but they won't be as productive as if they're getting sun half the day. Bees tend to like sunshine. My own bees are backed by trees on the north and northwest, with a few other trees around, so they're in full shade 2-3 hours before the sun goes down and somewhat shaded some other parts of the day, but they do really well there.

What you want, ideally, is sunshine to get them up early in the morning (face them east to southeast) and enough to keep them warm in early Spring as they're building up. (They can cool themselves in the summer.) So if the sunshine's pretty sparse, try to position them in the most open area you can.
Hope that helps!

Pintado

To the questions of how much sun, less then 2 hrs a day. I'm in the process of clearing away a many trees as I can. Thanks for your input.