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Where this comes from. The siting advice is the National Bee Unit’s. The numbers on drifting and spacing come from published research, which we name in the text. Sources at the foot of the page. This is not legal advice, and we have deliberately not tried to tell you what your council, landlord or neighbour can do.
The ground first
The NBU wants five things from a site: good access in all weather, firm well-drained ground, sun, shelter from heavy wind, and not a frost pocket. 1
Take access seriously, because it is the one people get wrong. You will be carrying supers off this site in August, and a track that is fine in a dry spring can be impassable in a wet autumn. Walk it in your mind in February with a full super in each hand.
Flat ground is safer and easier to work than a slope. Avoid anywhere that floods.
Get the hives off the ground on stands and slant them very slightly forwards so condensation runs out of the entrance. It is damp rather than cold that kills colonies.
Water, before you need it
Site near a water source if you can. Bees will travel up to 2 km for water, and if the nearest reliable supply is a neighbour’s pond, that is where they will go. 2
Water for bees covers what makes a supply attractive to them and how to win that competition. Do it in the first season, not after the first complaint.
How you lay the hives out matters more than you think
This is the part most people treat as tidiness and it is actually disease control.
Bees are not good at finding their own front door. A neat row of identical hives all facing the same way produces drifting, where bees blunder into the wrong colony. They carry varroa and disease with them when they do.
The scale of it is startling. In a crowded arrangement of twelve identical hives about a metre apart, all facing south, researchers found that around 35% of the drones entering each hive were not from that colony. In a dispersed group of the same hives spaced tens of metres apart, drone drifting essentially disappeared. 3
It shows up in the things that matter. In that work, every colony that finished the summer with a high mite count died over the winter, and every colony with a low count survived. Separately, colonies spaced 100 m apart carried fewer mites than pairs at 0 m or 10 m. 4 And in a direct comparison, low density apiaries where the hives were spread out, set at different heights and given different colours and entrance markings produced more stores and had significantly better overwinter survival than hives packed a metre apart in a line, all white, all the same height. 5
The NBU’s practical version of all that: 6
- Do not put them in a straight line with the entrances all facing the same way. A semi-circle or an irregular arrangement is better.
- Face the entrances in different directions.
- Make the hives look different from one another, by colour or by height.
You do not need 100 m in a garden. Any of this is better than none of it, and a painted mark by each entrance costs nothing.
How many colonies fit
The NBU deliberately gives no number, because it depends on the forage and the site. Small numbers can be kept almost anywhere in Britain, including in towns, but an area that supports a few colonies will not necessarily carry a lot of them through a whole season. The answers are out-apiaries or moving hives. 7
Two pieces of research put the range in perspective. Decoding waggle dances at a UK site over two years gave average foraging distances of about 500 m in spring, 2.2 km in summer and 1.3 km in autumn, which made summer the hardest season rather than spring. 8 During a heather flow, median foraging distance was measured at 6.1 km. 9
So your bees are sharing forage with everyone else’s for a long way in every direction, and there is no way to count what is out there. Watch your own colonies’ weight instead. Those distances came out of decoded dances, and the waggle dance is worth knowing about in its own right: it is the bees telling you how far they are having to fly.
The same reasoning applies to mites. Work in Germany followed 28 colonies across two apiaries, one surrounded by many neighbouring colonies and one with few. Over three and a half months the crowded site took 266 to 1,171 invading mites per colony against 72 to 248 at the quiet one, and by November was carrying 2,082 mites per colony against 340. 10 You cannot control what your neighbours do, but it explains why your treatment can work and your mite count still climb. Putting the varroa treatment on covers treating the whole apiary at once for the same reason.
Stands, and your back
There is no official stand height. Commercially sold stands lift a hive somewhere between about 150 mm and 250 mm, and adjustable ones go higher. Pick a height where the top of the brood box is at a comfortable working level for you, because that is where your hands spend the day.
Weight is the real hazard in beekeeping. The NBU puts a full super at at least 12 kg, and the box and the frames are on top of that. 11 For comparison, the Health and Safety Executive’s guideline figures for lifting reach 25 kg only for a load held close to the body at around waist height, and drop to about 10 kg above shoulder height. 12 Lifting a super off the top of a tall stack is the worst case in that table.
Those figures are guidance for workplaces rather than limits, and they do not apply to a hobby. They are still the best yardstick available for deciding how high to let a stack get.
One habit worth having from day one: never stand a super on the ground. Soil carries botulinum spores, and honey is one of the few foods where that matters. Use an upturned roof or a spare stand. 7
Wind, animals and security
- Strap the hives to the stands. It stops roofs blowing off and stops sheep and badgers tipping them over. Go easy on poly hives, which crush. 1
- Windbreak on the exposed side. Slow the wind rather than block it, because a solid wall makes turbulence behind itself. Keeping it back off the hives is also a job with its own rules, because the hedgerow closed period and the nest offence are two different things.
- Not the lowest corner. Cold air and water collect in the same places, so the question answers two problems at once. Flood risk is worth checking once for every site you keep bees on.
- Out of sight is worth a lot at an out-apiary. Hives that cannot be seen from a road or path are rarely interfered with.
- Mark your kit. Property marking makes stolen equipment much harder to sell on.
Be findable in an emergency
The NBU makes a point of this and it is easy to skip. Know exactly where your apiary is and how an ambulance would reach it, and treat your phone as a piece of beekeeping equipment. It suggests a location app such as what3words for recording the spot. 11
A ten figure Ordnance Survey grid reference pins a site to a single square metre, and you can read one off the BeeBase map. It also helps a bee inspector find you. 13 Registering on BeeBase is worth doing at the same time as setting the site up.
Neighbours
The NBU’s standard is a good one to hold yourself to: site an apiary so that only the beekeeper is ever likely to be stung, and keep it away from neighbours, footpaths and public areas. 11
The practical trick is a high hedge, fence or wall close in front of the entrances. It forces the bees to climb steeply as they leave, so their flight path is above head height by the time it crosses the boundary. It works, it is cheap, and it prevents most of the trouble people have with neighbours.
Take this seriously rather than treating it as courtesy. A sting can cause a severe allergic reaction needing urgent medical attention, and although it is rare, stings can be life threatening. If you want advice on reactions to stings, get it from the NHS rather than from a beekeeping page, including ours.
Two things that cost nothing: tell the immediate neighbours before the bees arrive rather than after, and give them some honey. A neighbour who feels consulted complains to you. One who feels ambushed complains to the council.
The short version
- Access in all weather, firm dry ground, sun, shelter, no frost pocket.
- Off the ground, tilted slightly forward, strapped down.
- Do not line them up facing the same way. Angles, colours and heights cut drifting, and drifting spreads varroa.
- Water sorted in the first season.
- Stand height set by your back, not by convention.
- Never put a super on the ground.
- A hedge in front of the entrances lifts the flight path over your neighbour.
- Know the grid reference before you need an ambulance to have it.
This guide is general information, not legal advice. Rules change - always check the current guidance on GOV.UK before relying on it.