I successfully kept two hives in a very small back yard for several
years.  Here's my experience.  (I won't discuss legal matters here,
although they must be considered, because they vary too much from one
country to another.)
 
You must consider your neighbours and people visiting your home.  Speak
to your neighbours before you do anything.  Promise (and mean it) that
if there are any problems which cannot be solved to their satisfaction
you will move the bees elsewhere.  If you don't have much space, try to
place the hives in such a way that people walking past cannot be seen
from inside the entrances.  This will prevent the guard bees coming out
to investigate.  Make sure that the bees' flight lines do not cross any
paths or other people's property unless the bees will be well above head
hight.  You may need to put up screens to ensure this.  Half inch
chicken wire on a wooden frame makes a good screen.  It doesn't block
the light but the bees quickly learn to fly above it.  I extended the
height of two of my fences like this.
 
There are two other potential difficulties: hive manipulations and
swarms.  I always used to try to make sure my nextdoor neighbours were
indoors when working my bees.  You need to consider the worst likely
accident.  E.g., whilst lifting the supers off the hive you stumble and
drop them.  You'll get a very large cloud of angry bees stinging
anything in sight!  However good your management, occasionally you'll
loose a swarm.  Beginners are almost certain to.  Non-beekeepers often
find swarms very frightening.
 
My hives were within 3m of my back door.  Visitors, including the
postman, used to come to the door but there was never any trouble.
(It was the postman's choice to continue to do so.  I fitted another
letterbox on the front door shortly before I first moved the bees in.)
The only difficulties my wife and I experienced were occasional yellow
spots on washing hung out to dry and bees flying against the kitchen
windows on hot summer nights.  One of our neighbours wasn't even aware
that we had actually moved the bees in for 6 months after the event.
 
Once we had a swarm which hung up in another neighbour's garden.  An
explanation of what had happened plus several bottles of honey smoothed
over that problem.  In the end what stopped us was a neighbour from some
distance down the road.  In spite of putting out water, one year the
bees started to use his pond.  Once this starts it's very difficult to
stop.  The neighbour was (or claimed to be) allergic to bees.  Jars of
honey were employed once again and we managed to wean the bees off the
pond but we felt that it was probably better to stop in case he really
was allergic so, the following winter, we moved the bees to another site.
 
--
Malcolm Roe                                Phone  :  +44 1442 345104
Crosfield Electronics Ltd                  Fax    :  +44 1442 343000
Hemel Hempstead, Herts. HP2 7RH, UK        E-mail :  [log in to unmask]
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