Hello everyone,
   I am curious if there is a minimum distance from the hive from which bees will not collect forage.  My curiosity stems mainly from my own observations of my backyard apiary (2-3 hives) which has an overgrown culinary sage bush (4-5ft diameter, 3ft tall), which is covered in pollinators of all types when in bloom with a large percentage of honey bees.  In my short tenure as a beekeeper (3yrs) I have yet to see any bee return to one of my hives from that sage bush which is 3 ft from one hive and roughly 12ft from the others, or my massive rosemary bush for that matter.  This is coupled with watching the trajectories of incoming and outgoing bees from my hives which I would predict the minimum distance based on flight arc to be no less than 150-300ft.  
   I believe I have read some anecdotal comments on this list to confirm that bees generally don't forage close to the hive.  And heard or read (I can't remember) that the waggle dance may not be well suited to short distances?  I have also heard that there may be some benefit not foraging close to the hive so as to keep it's location secret from potential robbers?  I am not suggesting any of these are true.  There is a lot of literature about foraging distances but those mainly focus on maximum distance and efficiency or differing terrain.  I found one study that stated the foraging distance was 45-10,000 meters, which got me excited until I read the methods and they only started collecting marked bees at 45M...  
  So does anyone know of any studies that have looked into minimum foraging distance and if there is such a thing, or your own direct observations supporting or to the contrary of my minimum foraging distance theory?  I have had a few people tell me they have seen bees forage on blooms in the same backyard as the hive, but I wonder if they are simply assuming that his the case?  

Mark

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html