That is not necessarily my experience. I have traps spread out in a 30 mile radius including at my hives. The places I have two or more, they will check most before picking someplace to go. Sometimes I catch by my hives and sometime in other traps. I don't catch many with 15 traps but also don't see bees looking to often except when I am convinced there is some kind of swarm activity going on. If there is nothing sweet in the hive and lemon grass oil, they don't care 90 percent of the time about the trap unless there is a swarm some where or one getting ready to swarm. It is easy to see if it is my bees by looking at landing places around my bees if I see activity at a trap close.
I have traps in town and in some pretty remote areas. It is pretty hard to know what is around you and where and your odds are just as good near your hives as not with the added benefit that if it is your hives, you can walk down and look and just shake them in a box. To me this would be the only way to tell if it was your bees and if so then yes, if they can find something as good a thousand yards away, they may pick that. But it is somebody's bees or a hive in a tree or attic if your bees are not swarming.
The key is they are looking at more then just your trap and may find something. There is no way to say that a mile from you bees would be better then by your bees as far as swarms go. I do not discount if it is your bees, the inclination would be for them to put some distance from the mother hive but with only a few hives this is easy to counter. I contest that your bees check your trap weekly as I am convinced that unless you are putting food in your hive, the bees don't care if not looking to move and that means queen cells or the start of queen cells in your hives if it is your bees looking. I agree that every once in a while I will see one or two bees hanging around the entrance of a trap for some unknown reason but it happens so seldom that it is just a freak kind of thing or a heavy derth.
Just my honest opinion.
