re: moving a colony 30 feet all in one go

"Surely all that's going to happen is that you will have some disoriented bees flying around before finding the nearest hive - which is where you want them to go."

I did exactly this early in my beekeeping days when a neighbor objected to my choice of hive location.  Moving 3 miles wasn't an option and 3 feet at a time would have taken far longer than neighborly relations could tolerate.  So I waited till evening, sealed them up, put the boxes on a hand-cart and trundled them to where they would be out of sight of the neighbors.  Total distance maybe a bit under 40 feet.

My result was far more than "some" disoriented bees flying around the old location.  It was an awful lot of them.  And they never did find the new location for the hive.  Even when I put a small box on the ground where the hive used to be, then hand-carried the lost bees to the new location, they flew right back out and went to the old location.  Eventually, they died in place.  The colony survived but they lost essentially all of the existing forager force.

​Mike Rossander
northeast Ohio suburbs

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