Janet writes...So, if any of you have experience with getting people "on board" with community apiaries, hints and tips, please fire away.  I am looking for strategies to employ to get the community engaged with and supportive of the apiaries.

Janet,
We have an agreement with the local zoo to place 8 hives on the site as an exhibit and learning tool. They have placed educational signs near the hives along the walk to educate visitors. The hives are highly visible about 20 feet from the walkway on a slope about 6 feet higher than the walk making the flight path well above guests. They have been there for 6 years and we have not had a single problem. Each hive produces over 100 pounds of honey for us each year because the zoo maintains thousands of blooming trees and plants throughout the season. We also keep an observation hive in the zoo gift shop with handouts to inform guests.

We also have our local newspaper and other media means publish articles about our operations on a recurring basis.  Bees are so popular that they willingly run articles for us.

Our training effort is up to 500 colonies now and we migrated our bees to California for almonds this year as part of our commercial training. We are going to grow to 2500 colonies and stop there. 

Gary

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