I used to have two small sites in a nice suburb in the North Shore of Auckland. When I was doing my feeding rounds, I would work my way around my sites – bush sites in the forested Waitakere Ranges, farmland sites around rural West Auckland, and then finish up in the suburban North Shore. Often I found that the hives on these last sites were in better shape and had more feed stores than my hives on the farms and in the bush.
The reason was fairly simple: more feed variety. In the farms and bush there is a huge amount of flowering plants, but they only produce nectar (which bees make honey from) for a small window of the year. Generally this is from mid-spring when the weather warms, until mid/late summer, when the tree flowers have stopped and the field/wild-flowers have dried up. In the North Shore suburb where I had these hives, however, people had nice gardens, with a wider variety of plants than what you typically find in the bush or out among lifestyle blocks. There were more plants which produced nectar for a wider part of the year, even through much of the winter.
It was great for my hives – more wildflowers and garden flowers helps bee hives stay healthy through the winter. Real food does a much better job at keeping bees healthy than sugar syrup!
Here is an article titled ‘Why are England’s roadsides blooming?’