how far can bees flyBees??????

How do you find honey bees hive? Is there a way to find the hive by tracking the bee or following it or something like that? There are quite a lot of honey bees collecting pollen at my house and I want to find the hive. I live on 121.5 acres of land; how far can bees fly from their hive?
Dude, asking once is more than enough. Asking the same question 8 times is rude and annoys people.


Bees will fly up to 9 miles to food though of course they prefer to feed close to home.

As for finding hives, there are two ways available to the layman.
The first is the method used by Australian Aborigines:

"The blacks had a clever way of finding honey. One would catch a bee, and affix a bit of down from the under-wing of a wild duck to the bee’s body with wax, then release the bee. The bee could not fly fast, being hampered with the fluff, and it would go straight back to the hive to get one of its fellows to rid it of the fluff. The black would follow the bee, never taking his eyes from it, though he stumbled over fallen timber, ant-hills, or polygonum bushes, until he saw it enter its hive, generally in a hollow high up in a gidya tree. " Bennett.

The other way is to fill a large bowl with synthetic nectar made of honey, sugar and water and leave it out until the bees start feeding on it. Then watch the direction the bees move and move the bucket 3 yards in that direction and put it down again. Then watch as the bees fly off again. Eventually they will lead you back to the hive. Needless to say this can take some time is the hive is a long way off.
:-D

I think you need to direct this question to a beekeeper. Try www.huntershoneyfarm.com. Not the right address please contact me.
About Wild Honey Bees

Wild Honey Bee Mentality and Greed
Another curious fact is that generally you will get track of a bee-tree sooner when you are half a mile from it than when you are only a few yards. Bees, like us human insects, have little faith in the near at hand; they expect to make their fortune in a distant field, they are lured by the remote and the difficult, and hence overlook the flower and the sweet at their very door. On several occasions I have unwittingly set my box within a few paces of a bee-tree and waited long for bees without getting them, when, on removing to a distant field or opening in the woods I have got a clew at once.

Honey Bees like to be near a spring.

They do water their honey, especially in a dry time. The liquid is then of course thicker and sweetehow far can bees flyr, and will bear diluting. Hence, old bee-hunters look for bee-trees along creeks and near spring runs in the woods. I once found a tree a long distance from any water, and the honey had a peculiar bitter flavor imparted to it, I was convinced, by rainwater sucked from the decayed and spongy hemlock tree, in which the swarm was found.

In cutting into the tree, the north side of it was found to be saturated with water like a spring, which ran out in big drops, and had a bitter flavor. The bees had thus found a spring or a cistern in their own house.

Traveling Against the Wind

I have a theory that when bees leave the hive, unless there is some special attraction in some other direction, they generally go against the wind. They would thus have the wind with them when they returned home heavily laden, and with these little navigators the difference is an important one. With a full cargo, a stiff head-wind is a great hindrance, but fresh and empty-handed they can face it with more ease.

Virgil says bees bear gravel stones as ballast, but their only ballast is their honey bag. Hence, when I go bee-hunting, I prefer to get to windward of the woods in which the swarm is supposed to have taken refuge.



Tracking and Attracting Wild Bees
After a refreshing walk of a couple of miles we reach a point where we will make our first trial - a high stone wall that runs parallel with the wooded ridge referred to, and separated from it by a broad field.

There are bees at work there on that goldenrod, and it requires but little maneuvering to sweep one into our honey comb box. Almost any other creature rudely and suddenly arrested in its career and clapped into a cage in this way would show great confusion and alarm.

The bee is alarmed for a moment, but the bee has a passion stronger than its love of life or fear of death, namely, desire for honey, not simply to eat, but to carry home as booty.

Tracking Honey Bees Back to Their Hive
"Such rage of honey in their bosom beats," says Virgil.

It is quick to catch the scent of honey in the box, and as quick to fall to filling itself. We now set the box down upon the wall and gently remove the cover. The bee is head and shoulders in one of the half-filled cells, and is oblivious to everything else about it.

Come rack, come ruin, it will die at work. We step back a few paces, and sit down upon the ground so as to bring the box against the blue sky as a background. In two or three minutes the bee is seen rising slowly and heavily from the box. It show far can bees flyeems loath to leave so much honey behind and it marks the place well. It mounts aloft in a rapidly increasing spiral, surveying the near and minute objects first, then the larger and more distant, till having circled about the spot five or six times and taken all its bearings it darts away for home.

Watching the first honey bee's journey...

It is a good eye that holds fast to the bee till it is fairly off. Sometimes one's head will swim following it, and often one's eyes are put out by the sun. This bee gradually drifts down the hill, then strikes away toward a farm-house half a mile away, where I know bees are kept. Then we try another and another, and the third bee, much to our satisfaction, goes straight toward the woods. We could see the brown speck against the darker background for many yards.

Attracting the Honey Bee to the Honey Comb Box

Our bees are all soon back, and more with them, for we have touched the box here and there with the cork of a bottle of anise oil, and this fragrant and pungent oil will attract bees half a mile or more. When no flowers can be found, this is the quickest way to obtain a bee.

Working with Honey Bee Mannerisms

It is a singular fact that when the bee first finds the hunter's box its first feeling is one of anger; it is as mad as a hornet; its tone changes, it sounds its shrill war trumpet and darts to and fro, and gives vent to its rage and indignation in no uncertain manner.

It seems to scent foul play at once. It says, "Here is robbery; here is the spoil of some hive, may be my own," and its blood is up. But its ruling passion soon comes to the surface, its avarice gets the better of its indignation, and it seems to say, "Well, I had better take possession of this and carry it home." So after many feints and approaches and dartings off with a loud angry hum as if it would none of it, the bee settles down and fills itself.

It does not entirely cool off and get soberly to work till it has made two or three trips home with its booty. When other bees come, even if all from the same swarm, they quarrel and dispute over the box, and clip and dart at each other like bantam cocks. Apparently the ill feeling which the sight of the honey awakens is not one of jealousy or rivalry, but wrath.
plain and simple there is only one way that i know and that is follow the bees and keep your eyes looking in the trees, especially in the hollow trees
Why? What are you gonna do to it if you find it? They have no interest in you.