What happens to the resident wild bees?

[Jean]

Everyone, my apologies if this question has been posed before but I'm just not seeing it anywhere.  My question is, when I put up a bee hive what happens to the resident wild bees on my property.  Do they peaceably coexist with the hive bees?  Do they fight to the death?  Or maybe these just ignore each other?
Thanks

[Natalie]

What type of bees are you talking about? Yellow jackets will sometimes bother the honeybees but honeybees don't fight with eachother unless there is a dearth and they start robbing eachother.
What types of wild bees do you have on  your property that you are concerned about?
You won't have any problems putting in a hive. I have hives on my property and I see the bumblebees and any other type of bees hanging out on the same flowers as honeybees.

[irerob]

 From what I've seen the worst that happens is seasonal robbing. Or if you saturate and area it may starve out the wild hives but that usually takes a lot of colonies, I have 10 on my property and there is at least 2 different colonies in the area, plus a large amount of bumble and sweat bees.

[fermentedhiker]

Generally speaking they coexist fine.  As was mentioned in the fall there may be some conflict as resources get scarce.  If you have a lot of hives it will put pressure on the other pollinators in the area.  I've noticed in my own yard that having hives here for three years has changed what thrives a bit.  I now have much more white clover(which the honey bees work) and much less mammoth red(which they can't but the bumbles love).  The bumbles also work the hairy vetch which I have yet to see my girls work.  So I suppose they are competing with native pollinators in that sense as well in that they are encouraging plants they like to thrive instead of ones they can't work.  But it's probably not an issue unless you have a lot of hives.  Remember that honey bees forage for miles away from your hive location whereas most native pollinators work an area much closer to home, meaning that for a large part of the season they aren't really competing with the bees in your immediate area but are working a large nectar source that is probably abundant enough that local pollinators couldn't work it all successfully anyways.

[Scadsobees]

Nothing will happen to them.  In most cases there are far far more blooms than the residents can handle anyway, at least that was definately my experience.  Sometimes you get a stupid bumble that thinks she can get in a beehive for some honey and dies trying.

And unless you have a weak hive, or the wild hive is abnormally weak there *could* be robbing, but I'd say that is going to be very unusual, and that hive probably wouldn't survive anyway.

[Michael Bush]

The same thing that happens when you have three or four hives... usually nothing, but sometimes robbing...

[Jean]

Thank you everyone, this is all very helpful.  As to the question of what type of bees I will have, they're Italian Carniolan - evidently they do quite well in the Santa Cruz Mountains.  From what you've all said I think the wild and hive bees will have plenty of room to forage without getting into each others way.

[Michael Bush]

Typically here (and this will be local) about twenty hives can be in the same spot without too much competition.