Apiary Layout Planner

Facing hive entrances south to southeast is a widely used beekeeping convention: it captures morning sun to warm the hive and get bees flying earlier in the day, while typically facing away from prevailing cold or harsh winds in much of the temperate northern hemisphere, which reduces stress on the colony during cooler months. Local wind patterns and site obstructions can override this general rule, so it should be adjusted for your specific location.

Because row width scales directly with spacing between hives in a row, increasing spacing has a proportional effect on the site's total width and therefore its total area — going from tightly packed hives to wider spacing can meaningfully increase the land footprint required, which is the real tradeoff beekeepers weigh between drift reduction (favoring more spacing) and land efficiency (favoring less).

Below roughly 10 hives, most beekeepers can reasonably carry supplies, empty supers, and harvested honey to and from a bee yard on foot or with a hand cart, but larger operations generate enough equipment and honey volume that vehicle access for hauling becomes a practical necessity rather than a convenience — this calculator uses 10 hives as that rough dividing line and adds a 12 ft wide path allowance once you cross it.

The windbreak setback is the buffer distance between your outermost hives and any wind-blocking feature like a fence, hedge, or building — the calculator applies it symmetrically on all sides of the hive grid because bees need clear flight paths in and out from every direction, not just the entrance-facing side, and a windbreak too close on any edge can obstruct returning foragers as much as it blocks wind.