FlowHive placement

Hello guys I just assembled my FlowHive but now need to know an important thing: Can I install it in my garden? It would be 30 m away from my home. I am afraid because the bees can be really agressive(specially the african ones), that it could attack my pets, my family or even the passer at the sidewalk on the other side of the wall.

Cheers

@Gabriel_Costa This is always cause for concern, but quite honestly, my hive is about 30 meters away from my back porch I have never seen a single bee anywhere around the porch. I sit in a chair about 3 feet away from the hive and watch for an hour at a time and they rarely pay any attention to me at all. My bees are definitely not aggressive. If they got too much so, I might pinch the queen and hope for something a bit less so.

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Mine is probably 150 feet from my house. i have a 3 and 4 year old that come near the hives with me and they haven’t had any issues even when i’m inspecting. (they do have veils when im inspecting) If aggression is a problem then replace the queen like @Chipper suggested.

I see, I’m new to beekeeping, I have only created native bees so far, which have no stings here in Brazil, that’s why I’m concerned. What kind of bees do you guys have?

Carniolans, very gentle. Most commercial honey bees are very gentle.

So just by replacing the queen for another one could make the bees less agressive?

Yes, it may take a while but the calmer genetics will spread through the hive via her brood. Will take a month to get the calmer bees to hatch but they will slowly replace the more aggressive bees. Need to order a queen with the clamer genetics though.

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My Flow hive is less than 10 meters from our patio, and the bees only bothered us for the first week after installation. Hardly surprising considering the disruption of transporting them and them rehousing them in a new hive. They are very gentle Italian bees, with some Cordovan genes from their coloring.

However, I think your concern is very valid, given that you are in Brazil with a huge africanized population. I don’t think I would keep bees close to my house in that circumstance, but why not ask your local beekeepers? Also if you can get pure-bred non-africanized queens, and re-queen your hives when needed, it should stay manageable. Local knowledge and experience would help you most of all. Please tell us what they say! :wink:

One other thing to remember is that you can’t re-queen a pure african honey bee hive with a European queen. The hive will kill her. If it is africanized (mixed african and european), you will likely have more luck, but even then, they are quite aggressive at rejecting new queens. So when you re-queen, make sure you don’t let their behavior and genetics drift too much into the aggressive line by waiting too long to requeen.

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I see thank you very much for the detailed informantion Dawn! I`ll check with the local keepers and share my experience here with you guys :wink:

So interesting! Bees are such fascinating creatures =)

I have one hive set up about 20-25 feet away from my back door. Other than building a barrier fence they are pretty much on their own and as of yet we’ve had no problems with the bees coming in house, stinging anyone including next door neighbors or anyone on street. They happily buzz our Raspberry and strawberries and thats about as close as they get to anyone. And I’ve seen them around town in friends gardens.

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My bees are 15m from the back doors - if you can position the flight path away from that are it will help - my bees use the length of my yard for their flight path and it is no real problem - 1 hive is 90° to the back door and only about 6m away but the flight path goes over the the next door neighbours 6 foot fence and is no bother.

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Yes they will breed them self down to a better bee that is calmer. This happen as new queen lays eggs and the new workers are 75% new queen and 25% aggressive over time three most of the bees will all be clamer group. Then requeen again each year or two.

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Hive is on property line about 10 feet from each house. Built 6 foot fence next to rear yard exit to front of house and elec. meter walked by hive for eight month and never knew they were there. I let my neighbor know when I was going to open have to inspect or to pull frames of honey. Have had no issues yet, 6 years down the road and three different neighbors have agreed to hive after tasting raw honey. So be neighborly and give some honey and keep them bee happy.

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