# How far will honey bees travel from their hive?



## Runestone

Just curious - As far as I know there are no hives in this area. The nearest is probably 15 km from my house. We've had some summer weather finally! And I have 100's of honey bees in my flowers (definitely honey bees, since there were also bumble bees, etc) 
Just how far will they travel from their hive?
It was GREAT to see bees!! The weather all summer had been wet, and cool so the bees were quiet


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## marinemomtatt

Been told Bees can/will travel a radius of 3 to 5 miles.
You may have a 'wild' colony nearby.
Grab a lawn chair and enjoy the Bees.


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## indypartridge

Typically honey bees stay within a 3-mile (5km) radius, but most books list 5 miles (8km) as the upper limit of their travels. 



> As far as I know there are no hives in this area. The nearest is probably 15 km from my house.


While I won't pretend to know your area, since becoming a beekeeper I've heard similar comments many times. People are often surprised to find out that there are numerous hives quite nearby. Plus, there's always the chance that a swarm from some distance away has set up in a nearby hollow tree.


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## marinemomtatt

I was just out checking on some extracted Honey supers we bought yesterday, there are Bees coming from several directions to take advantage of the free Honey still in the foundation. We have four colonies of our own and know of one colony in an OLD gnarly Oak so I guess I will be out following Bees to see where the others are coming from...~lol~...


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## ace admirer

i would be careful of allowing robbing of extracted frames....you might find that your colonies are the next to be robbed after the frames are cleaned


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## alleyyooper

My first year as a bee keeper I had one of my dogs stray off. Kare took a picture I had of the dog around the neighbour hood to see if any one had seen him, call us if they had. Up a long drive to top of hill a half mile from our home out of sight was a man pulling honey supers off bee hives. He had 20 colonies in his back yard. No body would have ever knowen there were bees in the area if they had not drove up his drive.
Same thing at our house now. 35 colonies divided between the front and back yard. Only the people who egnor our no tresspassing signs at the head of the drive knows there are bee colonies there.

The dog was found and returned home.


 Al


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## marinemomtatt

ace-admirer...Yup we considered the robbing so the new to us supers are well away from the established colonies.
It was quite a site up here when we drove home with the back of the truck full of supers, we went in the house to wash the sticky off our hands and when we returned to the truck to unload the supers into the barn the truck was SWARMING with Bees (even the interior), had to get our Beesuits on to unload the supers...we had a blast.


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## ace admirer

marinemomtatt said:


> ace-admirer...Yup we considered the robbing so the new to us supers are well away from the established colonies.
> It was quite a site up here when we drove home with the back of the truck full of supers, we went in the house to wash the sticky off our hands and when we returned to the truck to unload the supers into the barn the truck was SWARMING with Bees (even the interior), had to get our Beesuits on to unload the supers...we had a blast.


Yeah, the first time i saw it it was kinda un-nerving......


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## Michael Bush

It depends on the nectar sources. If there is plenty blooming they don't tend to go more than 1/2 mile. If there isn't enough food in 1/2 mile they will fly further. 2 miles is common. 3 is not at all unheard of and 5 miles or so is the longest I know of anyone documenting other than in the desert. Brother Adams says he knows he had bees that flew that far to the Heather back when he had the smaller bees. But it is a diminishing return. When the bees have to fly too far they burn up as much as they gather.


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