Laurence Edwards of Black Mountain Honey shares 20 practical tips for setting up an out-apiary on land you don't own. Get explicit permission from landowners, check for good forage and south-facing space, and assess flood and wind risk before placing hives.
Chapters
Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey, and today I'm going to give you my top 20 tips for looking for an out apiary. Permission. Always go and speak to the landowners. It's a good idea to find out where you want to keep your apiary first, but then please don't go and bring your bees to the apiary without requesting permission from the landowner. Forage. Always research the area thoroughly before you commit to putting bees in the site. You want a nice good wide range of forage to last you throughout the year. Go for some big hitters, some big trees, some lime, maybe apple, cherry, bramble's always good, rosebay willowherb, lots of nice weeds. It tends to be the, the derelict, not so nice looking areas that perform really well as apiaries, so do your research before you commit. Climate. Now you might be a bit limited with climate, especially in the UK, but you need to kind of maximize this as best you possibly can, and obviously it'll be be a bit dictated to by the location that you're in, but you might be 3,000 feet up a mountain and think, oh, this is a great place for an apiary, and quite clearly it isn't. So just try and have a think about the climate, the temperature that you're going to get, and all the other factors like that that could influence your choice on the apiary. Access for vehicles. This is my personal favorite, this one. I've found a number of out apiary sites before that have been absolutely perfect, that you couldn't get any— you couldn't get a better apiary site, But there wasn't access for vehicles, and I've taken them on and it's just proved to be too difficult. Now, you need good access for vehicles for a good few reasons, mainly getting the bees there. Please don't underestimate how many times you'll need the vehicle though. It's not just getting the bees there and potentially taking them back, it's getting the feed there, bringing additional brood and super boxes to them. It's that 10-minute walk each way can add a huge amount of time onto your weekly inspections, so kind of think wisely. I have a rule, I won't take an apiary site unless I can get the car up within kind of 10, 15, 20 meters of it, and that seems to be a good rule to go by. Out of sight. Some people don't really care too much about this one. For me, it's important. I don't want to increase the risk of my hives being stolen, so I always look for apiary sites that are completely out of sight. I try and camouflage them as best as I possibly can, maybe put them behind a hedge. I don't want people driving past or walking past and kind of saying, oh, there's an apiary over there. That information spreads very quickly, so I do my very best to keep my locations as secret as possible, and it's always best to keep your apiaries out of sight. Number of hives. Now, if you're moving 2 or 3 hives out to an out apiary and you know you're never going to get any more than that, then this isn't much of a big problem. But do speak to the landowner when you're approaching them for the first time and give them a realistic expectation in terms of how many hives you're going to be bringing there. For me, an out apiary, it needs to be at least 10 hives. I have some that kind of run up into 20 or 30, and I've never really gone much above that, just for fear of diminishing returns. Landowners might be very welcoming to 1 or 2 hives, and if they see 30 hives coming along, they could potentially kick you out at short notice. So you want a nice out-of-the-way location and agree that with them upfront and tell them the number of hives you're planning on bringing to the apiary. Protection from livestock. Now, in North Wales, this is really important. We don't have many arable crops around here. All the landowners keep sheep or keep cows, and cows and sheep are very kind of, uh, nosy and want to know what's going on within your apiary. So you need to completely fence them off from any livestock. There might be an area within the landowner's farm that is already fenced off if you're lucky, but 9 times out of 10 you're gonna have to put some sort of fencing up or repair some fencing to stop the livestock getting in. So just bear that in mind. You don't want to keep them in an open field with cows. They will just go up to them and knock them over. I've had that once with cows and once with horses. And especially what you don't want to happen is you don't want the animals to kind of get stung by going up and annoying the bees. And that happens as well. So you just need to take into account, protect the livestock and protect your bees. Away from water. Now I've got a couple of sites that are very close to small streams, and I've seen these streams over kind of 3 or 4 years. And I know that if they do flood, Not that drastic at all. You need to be very, very careful when you're siting apiaries within floodplains. We've seen it once already last year where a bee farmer in Sheffield lost a lot of hives due to significant flooding events. So you just need to take that into consideration and make sure that you don't put them too close to any water, but also too close to any floodplains. Protection from winds. We've already spoken about a suitable climate for the site. But I want to specifically pick out protection from winds as another criteria for setting up an out apiary. You want to give them the best chances possible to get through winter, and in a very windy site, you're going to be constantly going up there and trying to have to check to see whether they've been blown over or not. Now, I ratchet all of my hives down with ratchet straps onto pallets. I don't have many that fall over, but also I use open mesh floors, so it can be very drafty for the bees. So I want to kind of find A really nice secluded, not windy site at all. So it's just best to keep them out of the wind. Sunny and open. So this is the final weather-related category. Sunny obviously is kind of completely dependent on the weather, but all I'm saying is that you just don't want them in kind of thick woodland. I keep a lot of my hives actually in open woodland, and that works really well. It gives them good protection from the rain, good protection from the wind. There seems to be a bit of a myth going around that you don't keep bees under trees because Bees don't like the pitter-patter of the rain when it comes down, but I don't see that's any different to them being out in a field, so I tend to ignore that one. But it's just saying you kind of want to work with the weather as best as possible. Don't put them in a dank, dark place. You want to put them in a nice sunny location, and then that tends to get the bees working earlier in the morning, later in the evening, and it can help improve their health and your honey crop. Proximity to other beekeepers. Now, this is a pet hate of a number of bee farmers and beekeepers. Please try as best as possible not to set up large or even small apiaries right next to other people's apiaries. It's really bad practice. You could potentially be spreading disease if you're not sure of how well the other bees are kept. You're kind of competing for forage. There's plenty of locations where you can be really quite far away from other apiaries, so try and respect other beekeepers and keep it as far away as possible. Enough space to work. Now, I've had a couple of apiaries like this where I think I found the perfect apiary. It's in an excellent condition, an excellent location with really good access, and there's just not been that much space to work. A mistake I made is that I went looking for the apiaries in kind of January, February, found them, and then come May or June, they were really overgrown with brambles and all the trees had come back to life, and I hadn't quite realized how close and confined the actual apiary was, and that was very difficult So I was doing a lot of kind of maintenance trying to keep things down. So you just need to have a good estimate of how much space you actually need. I like to keep 1 or 2 pallets per hive— sorry, 1 or 2 hives per pallet, and then with enough space in the middle to stack boxes up when you're not using them or when you're doing inspections, and that tends to give you enough space to work with. Landowner agreements. Now, if you're working with a number of out apiaries, it's A good idea to kind of get into the habit of getting into landowner agreements. These can form very simple contracts, they can be an email or a signed written contract, and what that should state is it should give you the terms and conditions of using the site, your access arrangements, the rent that you're going to be paying for it. Farmers tend to accept honey as rent, and most importantly is you want a release clause from that contract, so you want to let the farmer give you a reasonable amount of time to be able to get your hives out if he no longer wants them there. What you don't want is him to ring you up on Sunday night and say, right, if they're not, if they're not out by Monday morning, I'm chucking them in the stream or I'm going to burn them. So just kind of plan for when relationships turn sour, because sometimes they do. Away from people. Now, this is a really important one. Please don't set up apiaries in allotments. They don't last longer than 6 months to a year unless you're very, very lucky and have a very tight Association, it's just best to keep them as far away from people as possible. So don't go near allotments, try and keep away from any public spaces, any bridleways, any footpaths, any schools. You just want them as far away as possible, and don't let people know they're there because people are very kind of inquisitive and they'll go searching for them. You might have kids finding them and going and doing damage to them, so just try and keep them as far away from people as possible. Avoid dense woodland. So I mentioned this a little bit before, open woodland's absolutely fine. You can see this is pretty much what we're in at the moment with a little opening. It works really well. Woodland is good. I mean, don't be scared off by woodland at all. Woodland is where a lot of the big mature trees that you're looking for can kind of thrive. But what you don't want is you don't want a really dark, dense coniferous woodland where the bees aren't going to have much access to forage. They're not going to have much sun. The damp can kind of creep into the hive, so it's just best to avoid those locations. Preferably south-facing. Now this is a preference. I have a number of hives where you just can't get them south-facing, and it's not a big deal, but the preference is, is to face the hive southwards so they can kind of get the sun in the morning and they get the late afternoon sun as well. The aim is to try and get the bees working as early as possible, get the hive temperature up to where it needs to be, and then get them working as late into the night as possible as well, and that should improve your honey crop. Rent. Now I've spoken about this a little bit before with the agreements with landowners include this clause within the agreement, but I wanted to specifically talk about it a little bit. Rent is a big one. Farmers, they're not going to let you have their land for free, but they'll let you have it for very, very cheaply. So the, the standard offering I believe is a £1 jar per hive per year. I, I don't tend to use £1 jars, so I just give them the biggest jar that I have. But then, do you mean if they want a little bit more honey than that, I kind of I tend to keep them topped up throughout the year. I might give them a Christmas card, I might give them a gift at Christmas. It's really good to keep your landowners on side. I have excellent landowners in North Wales, like I really can't believe how amazing they are. They're so helpful, like they come and rescue me with their tractors, they come and ferry sugar syrup around, they come and move my hives for me, and this is without me asking to. They're absolutely fantastic. So if you're watching, landowners, thank you very much, you're amazing. Go and look. It sounds obvious, but if you're going to have a look on Google Earth and you're going to find a good out apiary, you need to go and speak to the landowner, and then you really need to get there, get your wellies on, and go and look for some suitable apiaries. Try not to feel pressured into the first spot. The landowner might have a piece of land that he's really not that interested in using, and it might not be suitable, so don't accept something just because it's the first one that you've gone and looked at. Landowners are really keen to work with beekeepers, In my area anyway, so you can get some excellent spots. So kind of keep an eye on the hints and tips in this video and try and tick as many of them off as possible and don't get offered the first one that comes along. But more importantly, go out and have a look and have a feel and kind of see what the apiary is like before you commit to putting bees there. Respect the apiary. Obviously goes without saying, clean up your litter, show it as much respect as possible. If the landowner comes along and sees that you've dumped loads of Packs of fondant and plastic all over the place is going to turf you out straight away. You really need to show it the most respect as you possibly can. Close gates. Farmers hate people leaving gates open, so that's the number one way of annoying a farmer is leaving the gate open and him having to go and chase all of his livestock. So be really, really careful with closing gates and just show the apiary as much respect as you possibly can. Treat it as if it was your own. Enjoy your apiary. Make Now it's not so much a tip for finding one, but it's a really important one for me. I'm at my happiest when I'm kind of at my apiaries. They tend to be very, very quiet locations. Just kind of take 5 minutes to have a bit of a chill, think about how your life's going, and kind of relax and meditate a little bit. People that know me will find that I'm not very good at that, but I do try my best to kind of relax and chill out when I'm at my apiaries. It's good for your mental health, which we know is very important. what it's all about after all, is kind of having fun at your apiaries and taking it a little bit easy. So that's it for the video today, top 20 tips on setting up an out apiary. I hope you've enjoyed it, I hope you're enjoying the videos. Please subscribe to my channel and I'll see you soon.
