# General beekeeping > Your Favourite Links >  Drawing a circle on Google maps - Obeattie

## Mellifera Crofter

I've just discovered [this site] that enables you to draw a circle with a given radius on google maps.  A circle with a three-mile radius from my apiary stretches further than I had thought possible.

I used an image clipper to save the map.

Kitta

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## greengumbo

> I've just discovered [this site] that enables you to draw a circle with a given radius on google maps.  A circle with a three-mile radius from my apiary stretches further than I had thought possible.
> 
> I used an image clipper to save the map.
> 
> Kitta


Its great isn't it. I only found it about a month ago but am carefully marking in all the OSR and forage near me  :Smile:  

Thing is - much debate as to how far a colony forages !

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## Jimbo

Marked my apairy sites and gave them a 3 mile forage area. Interesting when you see the overlaps. For our club site there is an overlap with one of my sites, however in practice they are quite separate as there is a dirty big hill between them. Good fun though

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## gavin

> Thing is - much debate as to how far a colony forages !


I wouldn't restrict yourself to three miles, although that comes from many flights being up to 1.5 miles and therefore 2 x 1.5 is a fairly safe distance to shift a colony.

I've seen bees at my apiary near Errol (on the same day) coming home with the white stripe of Himalayan balsam (they have to fly to the Tay for that) and pointing 5 km away to the SW, and others pointing at heather on a hill 7-8km to the NE.  There was one fine day quite a few years ago not far from you GG, just W of Oldmeldrum, when doing some field work on foraging and the approach of a dark cloud caused a mass exit from the field in the direction of a large apiary we knew about 10 km away up the side of a slope W of Rothienorman.

Francis Ratniek's group recorded waggle dances pointing at the moors 'near' Sheffield (11km away, as far as von Frisch took it as well), and there was a 1930s study in Wyoming by John Eckert who recorded foraging 13.5 km away.  There is a nice wee article here.

G.

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## gavin

> .... as there is a dirty big hill between them. Good fun though


I wonder just how big (and how dirty!) the hill has to be. I remember some researchers looked at waggle dances of bees flying round hills and they integrated the navigation into one direct dance.  

I've stood on Wester Ross (and other, it is just that the Wester Ross ones were memorable) Munros and had bumble bees fly up, sometimes do a circuit or two, and zip off on their merry way.  They'd be hardy types though.

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## Jon

Is there a similar addon you can use for google earth?

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## Mellifera Crofter

How big a radius do you want, Jon?  Isn't Google maps just the internet version of Google earth?  There's an option in the top right-hand corner to change between Map and Satellite views - or is there some other information on Google Earth not available on Google Maps?
Kitta

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## greengumbo

> Is there a similar addon you can use for google earth?


There is.

I think i found it on this site ?

http://www.freemaptools.com/radius-around-point.htm

export stuff at the bottom.

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## Jon

Cheers GG.
I will give that a go.
I have circles drawn around various apiaries in google earth but I had to do them approximately by manually joining up points.

MC. I have a load of my own data in google earth, placemarkers marking other beekeepers apiaries and stuff like that.

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## wee willy

I'll have to retry it this time on the PC! it doesn't work very well via the iPad and tapatalk.
VM 


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## Mellifera Crofter

Which one, Wee Willy?  Maptools or the Obeattie site or both of them?
Kitta

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## The Drone Ranger

Wonder how far bees can fly and still be productive
I think that might be the origins of the mile to a mile and a half
Apparently the poor little devils life span is directly linked to their air miles

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## Dark Bee

If I'm not mistaken Seeley in "The Wisdom of the Hive" had some interesting observations on this very subject.

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## wee willy

> Which one, Wee Willy?  Maptools or the Obeattie site or both of them?
> Kitta


Only tried Obeattie!
It's just the combination of tapatalk and my mini iPad that severely impedes navigation.  :Frown: 
VM 


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## Jon

> There is.
> 
> I think i found it on this site ?
> 
> http://www.freemaptools.com/radius-around-point.htm
> 
> export stuff at the bottom.


Finally got round to giving this a go. Brilliant free tool for Google Earth and works perfectly.

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## The Drone Ranger

> If I'm not mistaken Seeley in "The Wisdom of the Hive" had some interesting observations on this very subject.


What did he conclude Dark Bee ?
Ps your Doberman has apparently shrunk in the wash

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## Dark Bee

> What did he conclude Dark Bee ?
> Ps your Doberman has apparently shrunk in the wash


I shall re read the relevant section and post my findings here for the perusal of your good self and any similarly afflicted souls.
It is the rain - Irish Mist, which has caused the dobermann (two "n's" please) to reduce in size. If you would like to wash him sometime, we shall be delighted to supply the bandages and various ligatures that may be necessary, in fact a well stocked first aid is advisable. If the last gentleman who attempted to wash him had one of those to hand, his stay in hospital might well have been shorter.

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## The Drone Ranger

He looks so lovely that's how he catches them out I suppose

Can we really have a big long thread on how to draw a circle ?
The attention to detail is where I am falling down every time  :Smile: 

Could there be a business opportunity here Lord Sugar---_Round Maps_

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## Jon

You can suss out the forage in a particular area.
or work out where swarms might come from if you know the local beekeepers. (the non clippers!)
This is our association apiary with a 2 kilometer radius circle.

minnowburn-2k-radius.jpg

On Google earth you can zoom in or out on places of interest.

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## Castor

3 miles is IMMENSE!!!

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## alancooper

> I've seen bees at my apiary near Errol (on the same day) coming home with the white stripe of Himalayan balsam (they have to fly to the Tay for that) and pointing 5 km away to the SW, and others pointing at heather on a hill 7-8km to the NE.  There was one fine day quite a few years ago not far from you GG, just W of Oldmeldrum, when doing some field work on foraging and the approach of a dark cloud caused a mass exit from the field in the direction of a large apiary we knew about 10 km away up the side of a slope W of Rothienorman.
> 
> Francis Ratniek's group recorded waggle dances pointing at the moors 'near' Sheffield (11km away, as far as von Frisch took it as well), and there was a 1930s study in Wyoming by John Eckert who recorded foraging 13.5 km away.  There is a nice wee article here.
> 
> G.


I have just used the link in this thread to relate distance from my apiary (500m, 1 km and 3km radius) to where I have seen my bees foraging. The 1km radius corresponds with the greatest distance I have recorded. This seems to 
Work I have found on the foraging range of honey bees (J Insect Sci. 2011;11:144. Foraging range of honey bees, Apis mellifera, in alfalfa seed production fields. Hagler JR1, Mueller S, Teuber LR, Machtley SA, Van Deynze A.) showed that:
	distances travelled by marked bees (leaving to returning from a hive) ranged from 45 m to 5983 m 
	on average bees were recovered at about 800m from their apiary
	the recovery rate of bees decreased exponentially as the distance from the apiary of origin increased.

From this, I take that:
1. Sometimes a bee does not do much foraging (50m) when it leaves the hive and at other times it can fly nearly 6km while foraging.
2. Mostly bees stay within about a km of their hive when foraging.

I think it would take an exceptionally dry, warm, windless period in Fermanagh to tempt my bees to forage usefully on the heather about 3km away.

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## gavin

Watch your bees' waggle dances, they'll tell you.  I have not recorded frquencies but my impression is that they dance equally for sites 1, 2 and 3 km away.  4km and more is less common but not at all infrequent and does not always depend on great weather.  This spring when it was cool they were dancing for willow 4km away.  I'm pretty sure that a scent trail from the flowers to the hive helps them, wind direction matters.

Bear in mind that the area increases with the square of the distance.  I hope those scientists realised that too.  Finding marked bees out and about is bound to be more difficult with increasing distance.

This work from the LASI at Sussex chimes with my own casual observations: long-range foraging is more commonly (but not exclusively) found in summer.  Your bees are bound to find the heather 3km away, only perhaps not every year and perhaps not in such force to get you a heather crop.  Last summer the association's bees here were dancing for heather 3-4km away.  I smelled it in the hives (well, over the open hives) and saw patches of honey.  It was a poor season though - August was not great for foraging last year.

http://www.sussex.ac.uk/lasi/sussexplan/dances

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## alancooper

Gavin,
Thanks for your interesting observations and the Sussex link.



> Your bees are bound to find the heather 3km away, only perhaps not every year and perhaps not in such force to get you a heather crop.http://www.sussex.ac.uk/lasi/sussexplan/dances


Landscape structure and forage habitat distribution must also be important for influencing travel - my heather is west (wind direction is largely from the SW) in marginal uplands (150m elevation) and my apiary is in hedged grassland (50m elevation) with good biodiversity. For most of the summer there is good forage (giving "hedge honey") - and until late Aug there is still mainly blackberry, rose-bay willow-herb, meadow-sweet and other minors. We then get masses of Ivy starting mid-late September. 

I will add waggle-dancing and more pollen load records to my casual observations on heather foraging.
Alan.

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## RDMW

What an interesting thread 
Three miles is a big patch of land 




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