🐝 Sizing an Apiary: Forage Capacity and Site Selection

About this simulation

A hive's foraging range typically extends 1.5–4.5km from the entrance, but the useful area within that circle is rarely uniform. Crop bloom, orchards, meadow, hedgerow, forest, water and buildings each contribute wildly different amounts of nectar — and a second apiary sharing the same forage cuts into what any single site can support. This scene renders that landscape as a live forage map and turns it into a carrying-capacity number.

How it works

• Forage available — every land patch inside the foraging circle is scored by type and by the current season's bloom, then summed into a kilogram-of-surplus-honey equivalent.
• Competing apiary — patches that fall inside both foraging circles are treated as shared and only half-counted toward this site, mirroring real overlap competition between apiaries.
• Demand — each hive is assumed to need roughly 25kg of surplus nectar across the season to build stores and produce a harvestable surplus.
• Verdict — the ring around the home hive turns green when supply covers demand, amber near the limit, and red once the site is clearly overstocked.

Controls

• Hives at this site — how many colonies you're planning to keep here.
• Foraging radius — the effective flight range bees will work, in kilometres.
• Season / nectar flow — spring bloom, summer dearth or autumn ivy flow, each with very different yield per land type.
• Competing apiary — toggle a neighbouring apiary on and set its distance to see how overlap erodes capacity.
• ↺ New forage map — regenerates the landscape layout. Drag to rotate, scroll to zoom.

Did you know?

Two apiaries less than about 3km apart can meaningfully compete for the same forage, which is why commercial migratory beekeepers space out yards and rotate them with the bloom rather than clustering hives at a single "good" spot.