And yet so many people will insist on placing their hives a few inches apart - good to see some evidence to back up the advice to space them much further apart.
LJ
Its an interesting study, but with so many variables that its hard to nail down which ones were the beneficial ones.
The "high density" colonies had 8 hives, all:
the same colour
the same height above the ground
doors in the same direction
in a single linear row with 1 meter (3') spacing.
The "low density" colonies had 8 hives which were:
different colours and had different patterns painted on them
were positioned different heights above the ground
had their doors orientated in different directions
were arranged in a circle with 10 meter (33') spacing
That's a lot of variables between the two test groups, and I wonder which ones are truly necessary and which ones are not. Colour + door orientation may be just as good as large spacing (or have no effect), but as the study is designed, there is no way to determine which variables are responsible for the reduced drift.
My hives are currently setup in 2 rows of 6 pairs. I requeened 8 in these rows and setup 6 nucs dropped around in the field. 5 out of the 6 nucs resulted in laying queens. One (1) of the eight in the rows did. It felt like some may have swarmed with the new queen, but it could have been a lost queen and major drift. I'm glad I had the nuc backup.
I'll be rearranging shortly. New queens for increase again after I pull honey.
To add because of the previous post. All my boxes are white, 8 frame medium. The nucs were singles, those in the rows were at least 3 with much larger population. More variables to consider...
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