I just got my first hive two weeks ago.
Is east facing with our house wall behind it, close to the neighbour’s fence. The remainder of our garden is to the north & west. There are lots of flowers with pollen / nectar.
The hive is active (apparently Italian bees). However the bees all seem to fly off to the east. And there are literally no bees in our garden. Not even the adjacent pepper tree.
I am very puzzled! Any thoughts / suggestions? Do we maybe need to move the hive?
Don’t stress. The bees will go where they want.
I agree, “don’t stress”.
There’s a lot of good learning in the video “City of Bees”. Watch that a few times. After watching that video (on Youtube), you’ll fully understand why the bees are not interested in the flowers in your garden. There are times when they will be interested in the flowers in your garden, however obviously not right now, for the reasons that will be made clear after watching the video.
Bees will fly past flowers to a better nectar source that is available. Scout bees are constantly out looking for nectar and will let the foraging bees know about it. But don’t worry, the flowers supplying nectar today might not be in a weeks time so your garden might be their better option then.
You can bet your bees know about your garden so don’t worry, its time will come, it is just that the foraging is better elsewhere at the moment.
Bees will happily forage up to 5 klm’s from the hive. Relax, don’t stress your bees by moving the hive, I assume you are asking about moving them in your yard, doing that will not change where they forage.
Welcome to the forum Paul, lots of nice folks here and happy to pass on their experience.
Cheers
The same happens with me but the bees are super productive getting resources elsewhere.
My hive is in the back yard. The front garden has many roses and 3 crepe myrtle trees but I’ve never seen a bee on them. Next door has a crepe myrtle in the front and they tell me the bees are so loud in it that they hear them through the bedroom window in the morning. However, the bees fill the flow super in 5 weeks, giving 18 kgs of honey. Apart from next door, I have no idea where they go each day.
Not at all.
As others have said, this is not an issue at all. They typically forage in a radius of 3km, sometimes more apparently. They will go and source whatever they fancy.
I also notice that my bees skip my own garden. I also gave them plenty of fresh water, yet they prefer my neighbour’s.
I’m having a flow with plenty of nectar around, yet I just noticed robber bees attacking my hive again.
They just go and source the food they think is best, no point arguing with them.