Bee, design that intergrate chickens

All of the designs for bee hives have them sitting on some type of stand. if you have chickens in the yard. area that move around that part of the ground is there any reason why you cant put the hive much higher up if you never plan on moving the hive around


i live in California it doesn't get that cold. our bee's are active all year long. we are able to support blooms all year long depending on how we plant.



also will the bee's try and kill my chicken?

Tokunbo Popoola wrote:...is there any reason why you cant put the hive much higher up if you never plan on moving the hive around

You can put them as high up as you like as long as you can harvest honey/inspect them.

It's not clear if you've made a design that integrates with chickens or not. If you have, could you post a pic?

Cj Verde wrote:

Tokunbo Popoola wrote:...is there any reason why you cant put the hive much higher up if you never plan on moving the hive around

You can put them as high up as you like as long as you can harvest honey/inspect them.

It's not clear if you've made a design that integrates with chickens or not. If you have, could you post a pic?

havent yet im trying not to get the chickens killed. im mostly wondering if anyone has pulled this off. because id lve to get them to eat beatles and anything else the bees might push out.

Tokunbo Popoola wrote:
also will the bee's try and kill my chicken?

I don't know but I've only heard about people being concerned about the chickens eating the bees!

There is no reason specific to the bees that they cannot be up high.

A couple other design elements to think about ...
1) Peaked cover ... unless you're going really high, of course. Otherwise, the chickens will use it as a perch and leave a lovely mess for you to clean.
2) Assuming Langstroth hives, you'll want to integrate some place to hang frames on for when you do inspections as you won't be able to set them down on the ground.

Quintin Holmberg wrote:There is no reason specific to the bees that they cannot be up high.

A couple other design elements to think about ...
1) Peaked cover ... unless you're going really high, of course. Otherwise, the chickens will use it as a perch and leave a lovely mess for you to clean.
2) Assuming Langstroth hives, you'll want to integrate some place to hang frames on for when you do inspections as you won't be able to set them down on the ground.

um i was thinking maybe top bar, Warré hives , or Perone hives.

--- i like perone because i dont plant to fiddle if they want to swarm let them swarm. im ok with setting out traps to catch a swarm
---- i like top bar because ive had a top bar that sat high before and stuff fell out of of the bottom of it when they pushed things out. i liked that ALOt so i figure put it a little higher and that could work out well. hickens could go under it.
--- Warre because ive been wanting to try it out for a long time


the thing is i really don't know. no ones said anything about animal interaction with hives except for things attacking it like mice, rats, raccoons, so forth beatles. not really chickens cleaning things up. also maybe ducks would work better since they are willing to eat grass and could work out better for this?

mostly. i want to know if someone has tried and failed and how it failed so i can try out different things in order to get it to work. because mowing or sything the bee yard isnt something i want to do if i can avoid it.

Have you listened to the Reverence for Bees podcasts? In one of them, I think Jacqueline Freeman mentions someone keeping a hive very high up to keep it away from bears & lowering for inspection. She keeps Warre hives.

You wouldn't be able to do this with a Peronne though. I just made one & it's hard to tell how large it is till you're standing right next to it! It is GIGANTIC!

if you want to go for top bar hives, have a look at this bee keeping short course

they add "stretcher" handles to a kenian top bar hive and hang the hives into a tree to protect the bees against small mammals.


I don't see any reason, why your chickens should be in danger from the bees. I know from experience, that cats and dogs are smart enough, to leave them alone. So chickens should also learn to give them enough space. (4-5m or 15-20 feet from the entrance hole) Bees won't attack without a reason. The only reason for them to attack, is to protect their hive against intruders, or when colliding mid air when leaving the entrance hole.

When hanging a top bar hive in this way, you can raise the entrance hole high enough, that the bees won't collide with the chickens. Also, chickens are no humming-birds, so they won't be able to fly up to the entrance hole of the bee hive and catch the bees. At last, if you want to manage the hive, you can lower the box, so you have easy access.

Tokunbo Popoola wrote:um i was thinking maybe top bar, Warré hives , or Perone hives.

Beautiful ... that should make things much simpler for you.

I was just trying to brainstorm with you since I keep bees and I keep chickens. I do not keep them together, though. That is not specifically intentional. I'd never really given any thought to the fact that bees and chickens would not mix well. My chickens free range my large back yard, though, with my boys (foam light saber wheeling at times) and dog. I figured my bees we're safer being separate from the mayhem.

Why integrate them? Do you lack space? Just like the challenge?

i think i'll add two bunge cords that go back to the ground we have pretty good wind around here.. not Texas wind but it gets crazy certain times of year blowing down fences.

Quintin Holmberg wrote:

Tokunbo Popoola wrote:um i was thinking maybe top bar, Warré hives , or Perone hives.

Beautiful ... that should make things much simpler for you.

I was just trying to brainstorm with you since I keep bees and I keep chickens. I do not keep them together, though. That is not specifically intentional. I'd never really given any thought to the fact that bees and chickens would not mix well. My chickens free range my large back yard, though, with my boys (foam light saber wheeling at times) and dog. I figured my bees we're safer being separate from the mayhem.

Why integrate them? Do you lack space? Just like the challenge?

no worries i was thankful for your help still am. I breed my own chickens. i dont expect my chickens to take over the world or anything but i do like the fact that they sit on there own eggs and i love seeing baby chics with there mom. so i admit as much as i like bee's. i like my chickens more. i tend to just leave the bee's the hell alone. i put mason bee sticks out a few years ago. i should really clean those out but with our weather here bee's are active all year long. our bumble bee's can be active all year long.

the main issue is water here. is the only thing that can slow the bee's down. sometimes there just isnt anything blooming due to drought. we have had a drought here for years and every 10 years we seem to flood. but some of the flooding is due to the way.. agriculture is setup here. too many near straight lines.

anyone way back to the topic at hand i accept any good ideas. even with my love for the chicken ive been breeding pretty much two traits, stay alive. mothering, and ability to convert very little feed into a lot lot of meat. due to the fact they forage well. i figure if they can look after there young and reproduce well then less work for me. we had a hive sting a mouse to death and it kinda disturb me when i found it. and got me thinking. now that im on my own land not much but mine. i want to have a good idea of what to expect even tho i know it wont go to plan. being on the look out for things and having a good design from the start to work from helps settle my mind about the whole thing.

and i do like to use every inch of space.. since we are very warm climate id love to work it so the bee's are able to get rid of dead bee's and creepy crawlies and the chickens or ducks or whatever just eat it without me having to do anything. (lazy yes but i believe in design if you use your brain well at the start sometimes you can do a lot more with a lot less effort ... also to keep improving as well)

i really love the perone hive the problem is not that many people have it. also it's a super hive depending on how you build it so it could get very angry very quickly. so i had to keep thinking . also i need to lay this out correctly. so im going to probably going with two perone hives, spread out. and a small hive yard. of top bar

sorry about posting three different replies to the same thing..

found someone who was doing it. sorta

no research on the effect on the bee's tho

we had a hive sting a mouse to death and it kinda disturb me when i found it.

Well, thats actually something that happens pretty often. But mice tend to try to invade a hive and feast on the comb. What I mean is, the bees have a good reason to attack.
Over winter thats actually a 50/50 situation, where you sometimes find a dead mouse, often embalmed in propolis, or a dead bee hive, with destroyed comb and the nest of a mouse. I thus close the hive entry for the coldest moths in the year with a metal grid, thats dense enough to keep the mice out, but allows the bees to fly on warmer days.
Still no reason to assume, your bees would attack your chickens. Especially, if the hive is high enough from the ground.

I have free ranging ducks, geese and chickens and one hive. The ducks and geese pass by on the way to the pond and also hang out next to it under the shade tree where its located. No one on either side of the equation seems to give a hoot about the other. The same goes when the chickens are working the area. I will be adding two more hives to the same location, it is near my house and gets a lot of foot traffic from all kinds of beasties and I don't expect much to change. I have a langstroth hive which is run more like a Warre with a few other ideas thrown in.

early last year, there were a lot of bees at a chicken feeder. don't really know what they were after. the chickens didn't seem to mind at all, and they didn't eat any bees. I've included beehives inside the chicken fence several times and everybody seems to get along just fine. no chickens getting stung, no bees getting eaten.

Raye, thanks for sharing your experience.

I'm planning to have 5-8 hens/ducsk on my small urban lot (8 is the max i can have due to city restrictions) and 2 hives is the max I can have. This is all in a pretty small lot, with kids, etc. so space will have to be shared. Good to know your hive can take it all in stride.

Emily