Charlie,

Shutting off the entrances the night before (with screen) and leaving them shut for at least a day after the move should cause the bees to "reorient" to the new location (or so what I have been told).  

Would putting an empty hive or nuc at the old location give you an idea of how many bees return to the old location even after being confined for a day or so at the new location?   I realize this should also be done during a nectar flow, otherwise the activity you see may be curious robbers.

A fellow bee keeper dropped off and opened up an observation hive at my house which had been at another location at an indoor exhibit for several days.    We left for about 5 hours as my friend needed to do an apiary inspection in another county about an hour South of my location.      When we returned, he just shut off the observation hive and took it home.     For the next few hours I had several hundred bees in a cloud where the observation hive had been sitting.  They finally gave up and decided to call an empty 5 frame nuc which was sitting on my driveway about 15 feet away "home".   Each night they would all cluster up on a full frame of honey and each morning they would all be clustered out on the front porch of the nuc.... waiting for a sister to come flying in and say "hey I found our missing home".    Slowly the queenless, listlless and aimless cluster of homeless bees dwindled to nothing (they either died or went to one of 7 other colonies in my back yard).

If the bees are confined for at least 1 day, preferably 2.... I think they forget the old location.      If it will be hot or warm out, I would suggest putting an empty deep hive body on top the inner cover with a feeder jar of water,  I would then put a screen inner cover and then the outer cover on top of the empty deep hive body.     This is presuming the colony has honey and pollen stores in one or both of the deep hive brood boxes being relocated.  If not, then a feeder jar of sugar syrup might be a consideration in addition to the water.

Steve 

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