Position of new hive-New Zealand based

[Maja]

Hi ,
I am a newbie to Beekeeping and just built my hives.First question I am  faced with is"where is the best place to put my two hives?"
My choosen place as far as sun and relative shelter (its a very exposed land with occasionally v.ghastly winds ) seem to be in my vegie garden in front of 1.7m green hedge.
Will bees appreciate people walking around in the garden? What is the safe distance I should leave around the hives ,so children walk around and bees feel safe to get on with their work?
Cheers
Maja

[Finski]

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I suppose that you have calm bees there.

10 metre sfe distance is enough for chilren in open space.
You may move some bushes to cut a viw to hives.

[FRAMEshift]

Yes 10 meters sounds like a minimum distance for calm bees.  Even then, if your bees get mad for some reason, they will find you.  It's nice to have a hive where you can see it often, so the garden may be a good place.  You don't want people to be directly in front of the entrance unless you are maybe 20 meters away.  I have a chair where I sit and watch my bees every day.  The chair is in a shady spot about 10 meters from the nearest hive and at an angle to the entrance..... not right in front of the entrance.

Try it there and see if you are happy.  If not, it's easy to move the hive.

[BeeMaster2]

It depends on your bees and how you handle them. After the first time I removed honey using the brush method, the back yard was off limits to everyone but me for 3 weeks and I took a couple of stings just walking to my work shop. It took 3 weeks for the mean bees to die off.
We walk right in front of the hives on a regular basis but I do not let my granddaughters walk there. I regularly sit right next to the hives and watch them. When I have them at the farm on gall berry, I sit between them.
I'm a firm believer that how you treat your bees is how they treat you. Since I have taken off the cloves and later the suit and slowed down, the only times I have been stung is when I have crushed a bee. They also are not agitated while opening them up and taking honey like they used to be.
I am not saying you should not suit up because your bees could be or become aggressive. It just works for me.
Watch JP in his videos, he uses slow deliberate motions and treats the bees with kid cloves. 
Jim

[Francus]

I have two hives. One is super calm and the other one is agressive when I work them, but not super agressive or hot. Both are side by side.

My daughter routinely plays within 10 feet (3m) of the hive with no problems. I suit up when I mow around them, but to date they haven't even noticed the mower. I will often walk up to within a foot or so of the hives (from the side) just to watch and only got stung once when a bee flew up my shirt sleeve and couldn't get out.

[Finski]

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It depends much how you select the queens you accept in hives.
If bees show defence actions, you must change the queen. If bees are allready angry. Move the hive away from yard.

[Michael Bush]

With really gentle bees you can walk right in front of the hive.  With really hot bees 100 meters isn't far enough away.  With "typical" bees, 10 meters is usually fine.  Any hedge or fence that gets them up over peoples heads and blocks the view of the entrance can help you push that to the fence...

[Finski]

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I have here my summer cottage plot and its size is 50 x 50 m = 2500 m.
I started on my parent's plot 1000 m2.

So how big propeties we have?

We raised 3 children here and 30 years ago bees were really mad. Then varroa killed mad German Blacks.

 So, if  I have 50 m a side' then I have house in the middle' I have 15 m space between border and the house.

Now after 30 years my neighbour 100 m away regretted that my bees make poo on his car. I must do something to that. He met dead bees on his home yard and I must do something to that.

I moved my hives to the corner where whre he cannot see them.

Then he came again the and asked what I have planned to to with problem.

i said that I cannot stop my bees fly in your air space. Only what I can do is move away and find a new summer cottage somewhere else.  after that he has not mentioned about issue.

[Maja]

Thanks everyone for interesting letters,

My "Bee Teacher" looked at my garden and adviced  I would need only 2 meters in front of the hives...
That sounds like I am going to deal with very calm bees .I hope he is right!
The idea is I will have more opportunities  to watch them than if they stuck in far corner of the farm.
My hives full of bees with queen will be  on the side in December.
Will let you know how I am getting on. Cheers
Maja

[CapnChkn]

Like everyone says, it depends on the bees' demeanor.  I have a hive that I simply called "bees from hell."  I have a small video of myself wearing nothing but a pair of shorts and a smile, lifting a frame of these same bees and commenting that they've started drawing out the comb.  A week later, I got into the brood nest and they took offense to the point I couldn't walk across the barnyard without getting attacked.

I split that hive and added a queen from a source that claimed he, "Never worked the bees with smoke."  And I can attest to their being really nice bees.  When one of them gets defensive, she will bump me over and over without stinging (which I hate having happen because she will eventually sting, and then lose her life.  I have to smack and crush her to avoid getting stung.).  These bees also like to land on me to lick my sweat.

I have a chair I set on the side of the hive, close to the entrance.  I know that because of the above reasons the bees can change, look at you and decide you're a threat.  I can go without a sting for months, then I get stung once or twice a day until they settle down, a few days later.  But, I'm always in sight of the guard bees or sticking my nose in where it doesn't really belong.

There are things you can do that may ruin the aesthetics.  Place the hives 10 feet in the air, turn the entrances away from the pedestrian traffic, put up a fence so they have to fly up before they fly out.  The main solution is to keep the highly defensive guard bees who hang around the entrances from seeing what their little insect minds think is a threat to the hive.

As for distance from the hive, you can see from what I've written I'm not going to be much help.  I've always walked right next, in front of, or stand and work within 3 meters of the entrances, except for the neurotic ones, which I find are fairly calm again, out in the woods...

[BlueBee]

Like everyone else said, with bee keeping everything varies.  I walk and mow within 2 meters of mine almost every day without incident.  That being said, I think the 10 meters advice is a better plan.

One way to get the bees flight path up higher in the air (and away from people) is to use a top entrance as opposed to a bottom entrance.  There are pros and cons in the bottom vs top entrance debate, but one good thing about the top entrance is they get the bees higher in the air faster.