Google tells me it won't work out - just want to confirm

We bought a house in April and I am creating a tiny homestead here.  I was hoping we could keep honey bees.  My husband has some experience with this, as he did it as a teenager. However, I know for sure that many of our neighbors fumigate.  We only have .6 acres total, and while I will be planting a lot of flowers for them, I'm guessing our neighbors' use of pesticides just makes this out of the question.  Hoping you can tell me I'm wrong.

Bees will go far beyond your property. Think miles, not feet. If you can convince the neighbors to confine their spraying to immediately before dark that would give the bees a better chance of survival. It also depends on exactly which chemicals the neighbors spray.  I once gave some neighbors a bat house in exchange for them to stop spraying for mosquitos. Maybe that will work for you too?

Something you might want to consider is "adopting" a colony elsewhere. Some beekeepers accept funding in exchange for some of the honey & wax later. Your local beekeeping organization might have more info about that possibility.

I love the idea of adopting a colony!

Hi Julia,
I second the suggestion to find out what chemicals your neighbor's are doing. Many won't stop, but a conversation with them about raising bees and the chemicals killing them, might possible result in them not spraying. Or at least maybe they would be willing to look at certain times of day or certain times of the year to affect the bees the least amount.

I don't know where you are, or how far you would have to go to get into an area that would have people gardening and farming on a larger scale than half an acre. Most farmers would love to have a bee hive or two (particularly since many pay to have bees brought in). There are also people like myself who understand the value of bees, have the land for bees, but are too scared of the little buggers to have any themselves. If someone stopped by and said they wanted to put a bee hive on my land, I would certainly consider it seriously. In this way, you own the bees, but they are just living somewhere else. Maybe depending on the crops and the time of year you might be able to move them around to follow the flowers. In the winter, I doubt they would go very far, especially if you left sugar water, so you might be able to overwinter them on your property.

In my opinion moving bees to follow the flowers is a major factor in spreading the bee pests & diseases that are so problematic these days.