Bees by the back door!

[BertieFox]

The traditional beekeeping advice in Victorian times was that you kept your hive or skep by the back door. The reasoning was that the bees got used to you constantly walking in front of their hive and creating a little bit of disturbance so got used to it and proved to be less trouble.

Does anyone have any experience of bees in close proximity to where they live? I ask as a small swarm took up residence in a vacant hive we had left a few feet from the FRONT door. (I should add we are in a rural location so the postie doesn't have to run the gauntlet of passing the hive each day!)

So far it has proved no problem at all even though I walk past it dozens of times day. So far none of them has even 'buzzed' me with that angry tone you get when you approach hives in your apiary. Our main hives in the garden can nearly kill us on certain days and think nothing of coming out to sting me when I'm weeding the veggies or just minding my own business in the vicinity of their hives.

I guess it might just be that this particular little hive doesn't have many bees yet, but so far they seem very amicable. We have a sneaking feeling they aren't from our stock of bees but some other colony in the vicinity, so maybe that explains their good behaviour.

I'll probably now step outside from writing this comment and be stung close to death by the same hive, but maybe not! I'll keep up the experiment until and if they become a problem, but would be interested to hear others' experiences. Our hive has a doorway to an outbuilding about a metre to the left, another outbuilding door about two metres to the right, and is located a couple of metres from the front door. Our path to the back of the house and garden runs right in front of the hive.

I'll update anybody interested in what happens as the colony builds up!

[Two_Sheds]

Does anyone have any experience of bees in close proximity

I am in the garden, face down in the flowers, every day nearly. With bees all around me, buzzing past my nose. My hands are constantly moving, picking flowers, deadheading, pruning & snipping, with bees all around.

I've never been stung, they just ignore me, I'm part of their furniture (I've never stood that close to a hive or a swarm though: they may well view me quite differently)

[alldigging]

If you want it moved then move it a few feet every day until its where you want it, but I imagine you know that already...

Whilst they might be happy and lovely at the moment, if the weather goes thundery they can be grumpy. Rather than risk them being a problem I'd move them a bit further away.

[BertieFox]

I've never been stung, they just ignore me, I'm part of their furniture (I've never stood that close to a hive or a swarm though: they may well view me quite differently)

Sounds like you have really good tempered bees. Back in the UK many years ago we used to have Buckfasts who were like that. Here we started with a couple of Carniolan queens, which produce very prolific and gentle bees, but it seems to be when they cross with the local French black bees... one hive in particular is practically 'Africanised'.