Here’s a quick video I made over my lunch break yesterday that shows how I use Google Maps to figure out where my bees might be flying.
Honey bees have been known to forage as far as 13km (about 8 miles), but the usual number that’s thrown around is the 5km maximum (about 3 miles). As with almost everything in beekeeping, there is no one precise answer because there are about 10 billion factors to consider first, most of them having to do with the local climate. Honey bees won’t fly 5km if they can find everything they need close to their hives. A 1km forage radius or less is not uncommon in areas with plentiful forage. However, 1-3km seems to be the average, or so most of the big textbooks tell me.
So here’s how I use Google Maps to calculate the approximate forage area of my bees (if you didn’t watch the video): Continue reading →
Here’s a photo of me working on what is probably the largest hive I’ve ever had to deal with since I began beekeeping in 2010. (I’ve created a special tag just for this hive, Giant Hive 2021, so everything I’ve written about it can be viewed in sequence.)
This is Flatrock on the Isle of Newfoundland, not far where my honey bees live. One-third of my bees’ foraging area is this ocean, the North Atlantic Ocean, gently kissed by the The Labrador Current, one of the coldest currents in North America. Perfect for honey bees.
This one-minute video was shot in 4K, so go ahead and blast the full-screen high-resolution mode.