Moving Hives

[Tad2much]

Now, I've heard the adage three feet or three miles, but I also seem to recall reading something here that was talking about how to move hives any distance; I can't seem to find the thread though.

This is how I remember it, let me know if I'm missing anything. First, you must seal up the hives, so know bees can get out (night or early morning) and then, after you move them (in my case about 20 feet) there are two different things you can try. The first would be to leave them sealed up for 24 hours or so, so that when they come out they must reorient themselves. The next is to put some bushes or something right smack in front of the entrance so the bees notice something is different and will hopefully reorient themselves.

Is this correct? Am I missing anything here? Also I had been planning on moving them tonight, but it snowed this morning and will probably get down to a low of about 30 F tonight and a high of 40. Is this too cold to move bees? Does it matter?

[Walliebee]

Sounds like you pretty much on target.


Also I had been planning on moving them tonight, but it snowed this morning and will probably get down to a low of about 30 F tonight and a high of 40. Is this too cold to move bees? Does it matter?

I think this would be a great time to move them. That's not too cold, and you are not going to get many foragers out at 40 degrees so they will stay cooped up naturally.

I have moved them short distances without closing them in and had no problems with them returning to the new location.

[Michael Bush]

It's a question of forcing them to reorient. But even then many of the old field bees still will remember the old location. If you can move them when they've been confined for three days or more (by cold or by force) they usually reorient. If you do anything that disrupts them they reorient to some degree. A lot of the old books talk about banging on the hive until they start nasonoving. A lot of old books also talk about stuffing grass in the entrance to force them to notice that something has changed and cause them to reorient. The old books also talk about a board or a branch to do this as well. But in the end some still fly back. If you do this on a warm day they just circle until they find the new location. On a cold day they may get stuck in the new location by the cold. A box for them to cluster in (only after you gave them time to find their way to the new hive) can give them somewhere to go if it gets cold. On a warm day with a warm night, they sort it all out by the next day with some drifting possibly, but no real losses.

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesmoving.htm