BEEYARDS: Learn to evaluate a beeyard location before you move

摘要

As important as it is to apiary management, the geographical positioning of beeyards is a frequently overlooked part of a beekeeper's operation, especially in the case of hobby and sideline beekeepers. If you are keeping fewer than 100 colonies of bees, chances are the locations you use to keep these bees resulted from a combination of fate, necessity and maybe some dumb luck. I suspect many beekeepers would keep all of their colonies around the house if it were not for the influences of family, neighbors, and local laws prohibiting such a behavior. Of course, I'd hope that any beekeeper worth his or her salt would realize that there are very good reasons why colonies should be spread out to maximize honey production.