> When a non-beekeeper asks me "How far will bees fly to forage?"
> I tell them, "Only as far as they have to."

While bees will tend to favor the closer of two foraging
sources of equal value in terms of the sugar content of
the nectar, this statement is only true for the bulk of
the foragers.

Hives constantly "hedge their bets", as "rouge" foragers
go out on speculative "reconnaissance missions" to discover
new or different sources, often far afield from the hive.

The pay off is that if the current "favorite" nectar source
dries up, the bees coming back from sorties to other sources
will then have the "best" trade off between distance and
nectar sugar content, allowing the bulk of the foragers to
"turn on a dime", and start exploiting the source that is
further away.

Tom Seeley's book "The Wisdom Of The Hive" covers all this
in much greater detail than I have.

                jim

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