Apiary Planning

I guess I’m a lot like a honey bee.  As soon as the warmth from the sun, that mild warm air stirs around me I want to be outside.  I want to feel the sun and enjoy it for as long as I can.  I go out and look to see what flowers are blooming, Spring is in the air… 
This weekend the first hints of Spring being close beckoned me into the yard and because time is of the essence I spent the day cleaning up the future apiary location.  If you were following along before you know from this post Spring Planning that we were making some changes, well some came to fruition.  The beech, well it still stands, albeit a bit thinner.  Our tree guy convinces us every time he comes to keep it, this time he agreed to prune it at least.

I started prep on the flower border area, I spent a lot of time digging the white rocks out of the ground as this is what it use to look like.
The far back left is or rather was the bog garden and that black stuff showing is plastic that was used to hold moisture and peat in place.  It had to be removed to turn the area into a planting spot, two things I will never, ever do again, put black plastic down and put rocks down like that. What was I thinking!

I actually did clean up all the leaves, but experience has taught me that when I do that a cold snap comes and causes problems.  So after I had raked them all into a nice pile, I shredded them so that I could spread them back out on the plants that had emerged from the ground already.  Mountain mint has made a lovely patch and surprisingly enough I saw a tuft of yarrow.  That means however that hive placement is going to be a little harder.

I’ve toyed with several spots but can’t quite decide what is optimal.  I know that I want the entrances facing the woods but if I place the hives in the front, I can’t do that because it would mean they would be flying out where the flowers are and we know that bees don’t eat where they take their elimination flights.  Also I suspect that they wouldn’t enjoy me working on the flowers right outside their door.  I don’t want to put them too far back because I don’t want the soft loamy soil under the hives encouraging small hive beetles.  In any case I’m thinking that the Langs will be off to the left and ride and the TBH will be in the middle, exactly where is the question…