# Entrance direction



## beeware10 (Jul 25, 2010)

any book will say east or south to face the entrance. most comercial hives are on pallets facing whatever. maybe the sun in the entrance may encourage flight, the bottom line is how much honey they make. after 50 years I will say that it not a big deal. If there is honey to be made they don't read the book and will make the honey.


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## Birdman (May 8, 2009)

I like east, I seen it some where to point them south and not north. I do cut outs they seem to be more on the south west side of home. Don't think I help you any did I.


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## DeeAnna (Nov 5, 2010)

In a beekeeping class I took recently at the Univ. of Minnesota, the instructors recommended facing the hives in a circle (or you can make multiple circles, if you have a lot of hives). The hive entrances should face outward. They like this method for a couple of reasons. 

One is the beekeeper can stand in the middle and access all the hives from the back w/o having to schlepp stuff very far to go from hive to hive. You want to make the circle big enough for one or two people and their gear to fit inside the circle of hives.

Also they said that orienting the hives in a circle made it easier for the bees to find the hive that was theirs. With hives all in a row, the hives and the landmarks around them look kind of alike. If the bees get confused, they will tend to just fly to the end hives, thus reducing the population in the middle hives. 

Just passing on info I've learned from others, but their logic made some sense. 

--DeeAnna


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## Birdman (May 8, 2009)

I thought we put numbers on top of our hives, so the bees would know where they lived. Guess I can use them to keep track of the hives.:lpf::lpf::lpf:


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## BigDaddyDS (Aug 28, 2007)

For the hobbyist, it's more important to take other factors into consideration. Although lore says to "point them to the south", or whatever direction, if there's a sidewalk to the south, it's not so much a good idea to face them that way!

Likewise, if facing them a certain direction causes their entrance to be aimed at a walkway, or at your house, or makes them hard to work for whatever reason, you may want to consider an alternate direction. Keep your neighbors in mind, and put up a fence for your bees to go up and over before they travel off to forage, if you're in a residential area.

With that said, in my opinion, facing the entrance in a particular direction has very little to do with the productiveness of a hive. (Overall strength of a hive is a MUCH bigger factor on production, just for conversation sake.) As my yards are open fields, I just try not to face any of my stationary hive's entrances in the direction of the winter's prevailing wind. And I do stagger my hives a bit, as to help prevent drifting. But, aside from that, I don't give it too much thought anymore.

Happy beekeeping,
DS


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