How far do foragers fly?
According to Brother Adam he had bees he knew flew five miles or more to gather Heather nectar. According to Huber, he marked workers, took them different distances and released them and looked for them to turn back up at the hive. He said they always found their way back when they were 1 1/2 miles from the hive, but past that they didn’t. He also says, and it makes sense, that it would depend on the foraging available. It also seems to vary by bee size. Brother Adam says his native Apis Mellifera mellifera, which were smaller, flew the five miles to get the Heather, but the Italians he replaced them with, which were larger, would not. Dee Lusby says her small cell bees, after regression, came back with totally different pollens than before and that based on the blooms and the spread of flora that depend on pollination she’s confident that the small cell bees forage much further than the large cell bees. This would be consistent with Brother Adam’s observations.
