The photo above is the view our honey bees see each morning as they start the day foraging among the ranch’s wildflowers. Many people wonder if there’s some secret to where to face beehive entrances.
Of course, if you ask 3 beekeepers about it, you might get 5 different answers because there’s no definitive “right” way to locate a beehive’s entrance.
That being said, we followed the recommendations of experienced commercial beekeepers by facing each hive’s entrance to the southeast.
Why?
Because the bees will see the sunrise and start working earlier than if we faced the hives in a westerly direction. This increases the total time each day they work to produce Texas wildflower honey.
Now we do have on the other side of the ranch a wild honey bee hive in an old oak tree. And that hive’s entrance (a hole in the tree) faces northwest.
There’s a couple things to note about that direction. First, it’s harder to heat a hive when the entrance is exposed to harsh north winter winds. And these wild bees do get a later start each morning because they don’t see the sunrise until later than our hives facing the southeast.