Williams Bee Farm

We had a great time at Shive Elementary School Thursday with Kevin Watson, Jennifer Porter and Mike Williams!

How Far Do Bees Forage?

For nectar, pollen, and water, our bees will travel great distances

When it comes to foraging for resources, honey bees are like a machine. While a single honey bee will make less than a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime, when you have around 60,000 honey bees in a colony, that all adds up to a lot of flying and gathering.

But just how far can a honey bee fly to gather those resources? The short answer is up to around 5 miles from the hive. But this would be the exception to the rule and would be in those cases when nothing closer is available. The last thing you can call a honey bee is lazy, but for the sake of efficiency a foraging radius of 1-2 miles is much more common, provided that resources are available within this range. These types of distances are much greater than those of other bees like mason and bumble bees, which like to forage within hundreds of yards of their home for the most part.

Honey isn’t the only thing bees are after, however. They’ll also head out to gather pollen for the hive – which they’ll store and feed to brood (developing bees) later. The hive also needs water, which they’ll bring back to the hive to cool the hive in summer and to dilute crystalized honey stores if needed. Lastly, new queens leave the hive to find nearby drone congregation areas to mate and perpetuate the species.

So, the next time you see a honey bee foraging on a flower, pull up the map. That bee could be from a hive a mile away, or up to 5. Drawing a circle, this is a huge area – tens of thousands of acres – the main reason organic honey doesn’t exist in the United States, at least by government definition. No beekeeper can guarantee what their bees will forage upon in such a huge area. Honey bees are made to forage, and when it comes to gathering needed resources, the hive has an impressive area at their disposal to choose from to meet the needs of the colony.

We're going to the West Rowan Library today to talk about bees and their importance to us and our world. Love talking to kids and seeing their interest in the bees!

We had a lot of fun talking about bees to residents at Trinity Oaks.

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