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Date: | Sun, 1 Jul 2018 10:15:27 -0500 |
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As some may recall I have been curious about the cost of moving hives for some time. As of yet I still haven’t found a bi directional counter, but that’s a different topic.
To date the standard rule of thumb is 2 feet or 2 miles. As a commercial guy I move a lot of hives, first off the ones in my yard get moved constantly just to mow. I move them 6 geet at a time, every 2 weeks and mow between. I have found it keeps the yard nice and is faster than the weedeater and less stress. Normally its a no brainer and the bees adjust in a few hours.
I also move hives around yards and pollinations. I try to keep that to a minimum as I have always felt the 2 mile thing was nonsense. I suspect that the bees fly off only to be completely lost, and that little to no re-orienting exist.
Yesterday I stumbled on an experiment by accident. I have been building a new honey house, and to do that I moved a 30 foot box truck full of supers exactly 1/4 mile away from the house to a big parking lot, somewhere around 6 weeks ago. Unknown to me a swarm moved into a stack of supers while the door was open. Must be a dandy as they are 6 mediums deep.
Yesterday I pulled the truck home, and found the hive. I set them aside as I unloaded the truck which took about 2 hours. Pondering it I went back to where the truck was parked, and sure enough a 2-3 lb swarm of foragers had collected on another truck parked there.
My thought was these may have been foragers that were "out" when I moved the hive as it was 10 in the morning when I did it.
I put that pallet on a flatbed and moved it back, curiosity and all. And sure enough within about 30 min, all those bees were back in the hive.
BUT where I had the pallet parked in the house yard was a swarm of about 100 lost bees. Still hanging on a super close to where that pallet was parked for about 2 or 3 hours! They are still there today totally lost, despite a hive 30 feet away.
Last night after dark I went back and got the pallet. Plan was to move them home and put them on a regular pallet which I did. But as of this morning after about 6 hours of daylight, there are about 2 lbs of bees back at the original site! Bolstering my thought that very little re orientation takes place after most moves.
There are a good number of foragers who are working in and out and have not gotten lost, but its quite clear also that a large number do not ever return!
Charles
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