[sr73087]

I am possibly moving about 3 hours south to Pennsylvania. What is entailed in moving the hives and getting them re-established?

 

[Tim KS]

Your time & weather will be your main concern.......keeping the bees secure, cool & dry during transport. Screen them in after dark, strap the hive boxes together, and move them with as little jostling as possible ASAP....... Open the screened entrance up once you have them at their final destination. Be sure they do NOT over heat during the move........:no:

 

[sr73087]

Your time & weather will be your main concern.......keeping the bees secure, cool & dry during transport. Screen them in after dark, strap the hive boxes together, and move them with as little jostling as possible ASAP....... Open the screened entrance up once you have them at their final destination. Be sure they do NOT over heat during the move........:no:

So a night move would be ideal? All the bees are already in and it should be cooler. 3 hour drive and set them up quickly around 11-12 pm in their new spot.

 

[Fivej]

Cooler temp is what you want, so it could be on a cool day or early morning. Overheating is the biggest danger in a move. If you do it at night, keep them screened in until morning and place branches/ other obstacles in front of the hive to make them re-orient to the new location. Don't be stingy, you want them to realize that they need to reorient. I have placed a scrap piece of ply in front of the entrance with branches on the sides so they can't fly directly out. They have to work at it. Leave it up for a few days. J

 

[grozzie2]

keep them screened in until morning

Do not leave them screened in unless you absolutely HAVE to.

We move hives multiple times per year. We do not screen them. We have them ratchet strapped together, pick them up and onto the bed of the truck after dusk when they are all in for the nite. At the other end, off the truck and into the spot they will be left. Used to use screens, always ended up with screens plugged by bees and hives overheating because there was no ventilation thru the plugged screen. Without screens, we see very few bees even come out to look around during a move.

We stopped using screens a couple years ago on the advice of one of the long time commercial beekeepers that's a regular poster here.

Caveat: Once in a while we have a need to move a single hive, and that's sometimes done in the back of the car. When putting them in the car, we screen the hive, but, those moves are never more than 10 minutes, and we haven't done it that way since we bought the flatdeck last spring.

 

[enjambres]

You won't need to use branches to prompt re-orientation if you're moving them 3 hours away. Just remove the screens (if you;ve used them) and let them out ASAP.

Personally I would move them at night, after they are all in, using a pick-up truck. Ratchet-strapped six-ways to Sunday, placed so they are riding along the long axis of the truck, not cross ways, though in an established hive with drawn combs, this is probably not as critical as in nucs where the frames could slap around a bit.

Have a plan to get them roughly in place at the new location just before dawn, maybe not on stand and perhaps just set down close to their new yard - you can tweak them to the right sites in the few days afterward. If you screened them in before the lift into the truck, I would pull the screens on arrival (after a wait to settle them down if the last part of the trip was jostle-y), then take a nap and get up and get them off the truck.

And remember, you may have different challenges in PA than in CT, including maybe bears, which might need fencing-out right away.

I don't know whether you need to have them inspected in CT before moving them to PA.

Nancy