UK beekeeping is lightly regulated compared with livestock farming, but a handful of rules genuinely matter: how an apiary is sited relative to neighbours and public paths, whether the keeper is registered on BeeBase (the National Bee Unit's voluntary-but-recommended database), and what happens when a notifiable disease such as American or European Foulbrood is confirmed nearby. This scene turns those rules into a site plan you can test.
max(screen height, 0.3 + 0.15 × distance).Honey sold in the UK must carry a legally compliant label (true weight, "Produce of more than one country" wording for blends, a lot/batch code and the packer's details) even for a handful of jars sold at the garden gate — labelling law applies regardless of BeeBase registration status.
An interactive 3D apiary site plan: move the hive stand relative to the boundary, raise or lower the screening hedge, and toggle BeeBase registration and a notifiable-disease standstill zone to see which parts of your setup are actually compliant.
Bees gain height naturally as they travel from the hive, but a barrier placed right at the entrance forces them upward sooner. The scene models flight-crossing height at the boundary as a function of screen height and distance, flagging the standard "flying above head height" siting guidance.
Drag the distance and screen-height sliders to see the animated bee flight paths turn from red to green as they clear the pedestrian's head height. Toggle BeeBase registration and the disease-alert switch to see how a Foulbrood standstill zone affects nearby apiaries.
BeeBase registration is voluntary in most of Great Britain, but it is the main channel the National Bee Unit uses to warn keepers inside a disease standstill zone — unregistered apiaries can be missed entirely.