Suggestions on how to move hives short distances

[Efraim Mescheloff]

I have empty hive equipment near my house and occasionally swarms move in undetected and set up "home base" where they are not desired. My apiary is about 500 M distant and I would like to move these hives there without having too many "stragglers" returning to my home after their hive is gone. The general practice of making the move in two steps (placing the hive several miles away for a while before moving them back to the apiary) is not practical for me. I've been wondering if anyone has a good method for making the move in one step without losing too many field bees.
Any suggestions would be apreciated.

[beegee]

Michael Bush says move them and put a branch in front of the entrance so they must re-orient themselves.

I put a screen door on the hive at night and move them. I leave the screen door on the next day for several hours after daylight, then release the bees, using the branch method.

[okb]

I second Beegee.

Ive done it a number of times.

[mbholl]

Does branch mean that I just cut a branch off a tree? And then what? Lay it across the entrance? Would this method work when making splits? If I used a branch could I leave both sides in the yard?

[Michael Bush]

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

Cold weather is a special case. Some always go back to the old location. If the weather is warm they almost always find there way into some hive, and if the closest hive is their own, they will find that one. They will circle until they find it. If the weather is marginal and they get caught by the cold before they find it, that's a bad thing.

[Efraim Mescheloff]

Your suggestions sound good--right now, in Israel we are having acold snap so I'll have to wait a few days for the warm weather to return and then I'll give it a try.
When I have results to report I'll try to get back to you.
For the meanwhile, my sincere thanks!

[Efraim Mescheloff]

I used your suggestion and with minimum reservations can say that it worked. There were a few handfuls of bees that have been returning to the original spot, but their numbers are bearable. Each day there are fewer bees coming back to the missing hive and they aren't causing any problems. My neighbors don't even realize that there are "homeless wanderers" in the vicinity. I suppose that in a few more days the last of them will manage to re-locate elsewhere.
Thanks for your help!!

[Dale Hodges]

I use a moving screen, when I get to new location I lean the screen up against the hive ,blocking the entrance , confuses the bees enough they remark hive.

[Efraim Mescheloff]

The farm where I keep my hives wanted to do some ground-leveling work on the land which included my apiary. I was requested to move my hives "just 20-30 meters" from their normal location. I feared trouble was brewing!
Together with one of my sons, I spent four nightime hours of work carefully re-locating all my hives about 30 meters to the east of their position. I was careful to "reconstruct" the setup of all the hives, maintaining the same relative positions for them all. It was almost as if we had lifted up the apiary in one fell swoop and put them down in their exact relative positions to the east. All entrances faced in the same direction they had previously faced.
When I checked out the activity of the apiary around noon the next day, I saw a perfectly normal picture of activity--no bees were flying around their old spot while activity at the entrances to the relocated hives was going on as if nothing had happened.
My fears were allayed!

[beemanlee]

Try to move the hive less than 2 feet each day or time you are at your yard.....
The bees will not miss the hive when they return with a load....
You can do the rotation in that way too, but don't change the angle more than 10 deg. at each time... The angle to the sun and north is key to the bee making it back....
Lee....

[beemanlee]

Sometimes it's easier to move the hives to a second location more than 2 miles away for a few weeks till new field bees are in the hives, say 2 to 3 weeks, then move them back and they will be OK...
Lee.....

[Aram]

Efraim's problem was that he couldn't move them two miles away and he needed to move them 500 meters. That's about 1648 feet. Or moving them two feet/ day for 824 days. Now that would be commitment!
:)
One thing I did in addition to the branch was I placed a nuc with some foundation wax at the old location. The stragglers had a place to go in for the night, and, for two nights I closed it after dark and took it to the hive at the new spot. Takes some commitment, just as much as I could muster. ;)

[Ian]

Move them in a cold snap, if that cold snap is a week of so, they will re orient themselve on thier first flight as the weather warms.

[BGhoney]

You can put an empty nuc in the old spot and move the bees back each night that find there way into it. They will figure it out in time, and you have no loss.:rolleyes: