Wade,
Ill be brave and go against the trend here,,,
I feel that what you are experiencing is NOT drifting, and does not apply in this case.
No mater where you placed these colonies you beefed up, the same amount of bees probably would have flown back to the mother colony.
The definition of Drifting bees is: The failure of bees to return to their own hive in an apiary containing many colonies. Young bees tend to drift more than older bees, and bees from small colonies tend to drift into larger colonies.
What did your bees do?,,,
they probably flew back to their own colony and did not drift.
The bees returned to their own hive and did not accept the drifting that you the beekeeper tried to impose on them.
Although bees from small colonies will tend to drift to larger colonies, this happens little by littlie over a period of time and doubt that the loss of bees due to drifting would be noticeable over just a single week.
You mentioned that you beefed up two colonies. The best way to beef up colonies is to add a frame of brood with adhering bees and shake a frame of bees. For each frame of bees you want colony to have, you need to shake two because about ½ the bees will fly back to the mother colony. So one frame of brood and one frame of bees will give an end result of about one frame of bees covering the frame brood.
Adding brood is important in beefing up weak colonies because the brood pheromone emitted by the brood seems to improve moral. and this is very important concerning weak colonies. It will also help hold the added nurse bees, and provides for future bees.
[ April 24, 2006, 06:46 PM: Message edited by: Pcolar ]