> I find opposing information about the relation between wind farms and
> beehives. Some say no problems others say problems

Do the math - it says "no problem".

Yes, modern wind turbines do kill lots and lots of insects.  The modern
(very tall) wind turbines have blades ("propellers") that are about 40
meters long, so the speed of the tip of the blade travels about (2*pi*40)
250 meters every revolution, so at a very laid-back 10 revolutions per
minute, that's (10*250*60/1000) about 150 kph or 93 mph.

The impact of dead insects can "rough up" the leading edges of the blades,
and mess up the aerodynamics.  There are multiple papers out there that
model the decrease in efficiency in electrical production over time due to
this effect.

BUT!  Honeybees themselves are at a very tiny ("vanishingly small") risk
from wind turbines.  They are at far more risk from all those windshields
going 60 mph.  

So, as my Dad advised when I was young - "Be the windshield, not the bug".
(He denies saying this now.)

Bees simply don't tend to fly high enough over the treetop level to get hit
by one of these wind turbine blades, which are invariably well above the
treetops and the terrain  (10s of meters, minimum).  Some blade tips at some
wind farms are nearly 100 meters above the treetops at their lowest point.
This sort of design is consistent, as one does not want any wind turbulence
from the terrain to mess up the nice smooth airflow toward the wind
turbines.  Honeybees tend to fly no higher than they must to get over the
treetops, which is a good strategy for a flying machine weighing in at only
about 1/10th of a gram.

I will ignore any/all nonsense associated with the effect of "electrical
power line RFI" on bees, as many beehives have been placed directly under
high-tension transmission lines without ill effect (at least, until the crew
comes through trying to mow the right-of way...)  I will also ignore other
mystical magical things that cannot be measured with currently-made
hardware, such as "ley lines", dowsing, and so on.

A small-scale single-family wind turbine could well kill bees at higher wind
speeds, and will be low enough to kill bees, but it will not have the sweep
or the tip speeds of the big boys, so far less damage is done.  Guesstimate
it at no more than the windshield of the family car owned by the same family
that owns the home-wind-power rig.

When I was still in school (in the 1970s), I designed wind turbines which
were built out on Cape Cod and up on PEI to demonstrate that small-scale
wind power was just as useful for generating electricity as it was for
pumping water on farms prior to the "Rural Electrification"  programs.  Mine
were nowhere as large or as grand as the massive ones you see today, they
were tiny 10 to 20 KW jobs.  Just enough for one home or farm.

One of my tricks remains a disappointment because no one copied the concept
- I put a simple hydraulic pump atop the tower with the blades (custom-made
at rock-bottom prices on the orders of 72-year-old "Aunt" Mariam Hartzell
who owned the majority of Hartzell Propeller, near Troy Ohio, and was a
visionary who saw far past Piper Cubs and "General Aviation" in general) and
used hydraulic fluid to turn a similar pump on the ground, which spun the
generator, sitting safely on the ground.  Hydraulics just don't care, so one
could gang together several turbines to turn one large generator, take one
turbine out of service for maintenance work while the others continued to
spin, and play all sorts of other games with simple plumbing to keep things
both fail-safe and safe for humans.  A hydraulic pump is a small thing, so
the towers (easily 3/4ths the cost of a "windmill") could be much lighter
and cheaper with so little mass at the top.  But apparently, no one liked
messing about with hydraulics, even if all the components were available at
any tractor dealer and losses due to hydraulic fluid "friction" are tiny.

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