These methods are not something that can be duplicated in a populous apiary, it is true.  However, figure 6 is of interest to anyone with 8 or so hives in a line.  In that figure, the drifting of 100 marked bees from each of 8 colonies is tracked.  They used software analysis of video to find the shots with the marked bees; very cool!  It is a bear of a figure to interpret, sadly, but where there is a will, there is a way.

In figure 6, https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0216286.g006 , A-C are the linearly arranged (control) colonies.  They are represented by a circular arrangement, just to make your brain exercise.  There is a small black line showing where the end colonies are artificially placed next to each other for a circular representation.  More gray means more bees coming in from elsewhere, arrows show if they are from adjacent or further afield.

Note that the linear colonies were 1 m apart, and 2 m above the ground.  WOW.  serious predator issues?  two legged or four?  Didn't want to mow?  How did the beeks get up there...

I had expected the end colonies to collect a lot of bees; this happened but only on one side of the line, in 1/3 "takes" of this trial. 

In all 3 cases, for the linearly arranged colonies in A-C, positions in the middle third (not the exact middle, curiously) collected the most bees. 

S.C. Jay did some classic work ( https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00218839.1965.11100119 ) and in general found more drifting to end colonies.  Wind direction played a role too.  I bet those colonies were not 1 m apart.

And there was (evaluated by eye anyways) as much drifting in the elevated and spaced out colonies.  

So. Drifting happens. Good to know.  Any drifting stories anyone wants to share?  

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