Apiary Meaning? What Is An Apiary?

Apiary meaning, What is an Apiary?

I often talk about our apiaries at The Elmer Honey Co on social media, and I assume you know the apiary meaning. However, many of our readers and followers need help understanding what an apiary is.

In this blog post, I decided to explain what an apiary is and why we have them and the work that goes into keeping an apiary, and we are talking about more than just keeping bees.

What is an Apiary?

An apiary is a location where beekeepers keep their bees. Apiaries come in all shapes and sizes; don’t just think apiaries are found in the countryside or rolling hills. Apiaries can also be found in urban locations and have become very popular in our capital city of London.

Also, an apiary is more than just a name for where a commercial beekeeper or bee farmer keeps their bees. Many hobby beekeepers have apiaries, and like us, the Elmer Honey Co, we have more than one apiary, and they are in different locations near where we live.

Our first apiary was a short walk from our home, and when we started keeping bees, we had one hive. We can call it an apiary, but more than four hives are more of an apiary than your usual backyard beekeeper.

Our first apiary grew to over 30 hives very quickly, and with many neighbours around and a massive amount of honey bees flying around, we had to reduce our hives to a handful and find another location.

Finding the right location for an apiary

Finding the right location for an apiary is more complicated than just throwing a few hives in a field and hoping for the best. I made a few mistakes with my second apiary location, and after only a couple of weeks in that apiary, I had to move my bees rapidly.

So what did I do wrong with the first apiary?

The first problem was that the owners of the land said that they were not going to be near the bees, but it turns out that they were always going to be walking past the hives and that they also walk right along the bee’s flight paths not just now and again but every day and a few times a day.

After the landowners were getting stung, we decided that e had to find another location, and very quickly, the landowners found me a new site, and this place is perfect… well, almost.

The new location is a fenced-off area next to a pond in the middle of a horse’s field, and it is a lovely location. A bit of a walk as the person who owns the horse’s doe not want me driving through the field.

When we took on this location, I had a lot of work to do to get it safe for myself and the bees. The area was overgrown with brambles and trees, and several willow trees had lost limbs. The trees provide shelter, and the bees absolutely love this location.

It was a lot of work to get this apiary to be perfect, but it was worth it. I need to get one of the willow trees sorted out as it keeps dropping branches, but I will see to it later.

The best bit about this location is that the landowners and general public are nowhere near, so the bees can get on and do what they need to do.

Our Woodland Apiary

Our other apiary location is in woodland, and I love this location. I am not sure how well our hives will perform in this location, but I have about 5 to 12 acres of woodland to use and absolutely love the silence and that I won’t and don’t see anybody the whole time I am tending to my hives.

It is a drive offroad to get to the apiary location, and we have a few other things we need to be mindful of. Wood wasps are massive and love to hound my hives along with hornets. We lost several hives to wasps and hornets, which is devastating, but we now have a few things in place to prevent this.

The other thing that we need to be aware of at this apiary is that there appear to be a lot of woodpeckers about, and they love to rattle through the side of a bee hive, so we now need to look at putting wire cages around the hives as well.

Do You Want to put bees in my garden?

This is a question I get asked often, and I am honoured that you would allow me onto your property and into your garden to keep bees. Still, because of the scale we are trying to operate at, having two hives here and two hives makes beekeeping quite a bit of work, and I would rather have ten and 20 hives here as it is an efficient way to do it.

I look after and show other new beekeepers how to be a beekeeper in their gardens, but they are their hives and bees, and I am only on hand to guide them and show them the way.

So if you were wondering what the apiary meaning is, that is what an apiary is to us at The Elmer Honey CO. it’s a place where we keep our bees, generally in a field or a woodland.

Support The Elmer Honey Co.

Being a beekeeper is a demanding profession, and it takes time to learn. I am not even sure you can ever say you have mastered it. I am constantly learning and always making mistakes, but I hope to learn from these mistakes.

However, looking after the bees is only a tiny part of being a beekeeper; the other part is selling honey and other hive products. We need these sales to keep our small business going.

We want to encourage you to buy honey and candles from us, and even if you do not like honey (I don’t), honey makes such a great gift, and I don’t know anybody who does not like receiving honey as a gift.

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