A lot of work on drifting bees was done in the 1960's by Cam Jay.  "It was also reduced by arranging a group of 16 hives in a Graeco-Latin square." IE each hive in row of four hives faces a different direction, in each row, the hive's entrance direction changed by one.  Reducing drifting can even-out the production of an apiary.

Beekeeping changed to pallets for ease of moving and to get hives off the ground. I place hives in pairs (2 face east, 2 west) on the pallet as they are easy to work from the side . The next pallet would be north & south and the next at a slight off-set angle, all to reduce drift. Separation by at least two metres also makes a difference.  The colour of the bottom super (each being different) and or adding a design around the entrance all help to reduce drifting.  These have been adapted by queen breeders to stop returning queens drifting into the wrong nuc. 

I'm not sure whether the really big commercial beekeepers worry about drifting.
In Australia commercial beekeepers move their hives to as many as five different locations in a good season depending on what's flowering.  They have designed the hive'pallet lay-out for ease of moving which is highly mechanised. Some beekeepers place four hives on a pallet, with entrances all facing the same direction: the back pair of hives have a gap of 4 inches to allow bees to come and go.  A queen excluder restricting the brood to the bottom super.  Hives are strapped with emlocks on to the pallets two supers high ( generally the top super is mostly empty having just had the honey removed for extracting).   

Apiaries are set up in four rows of pallets with a big gap down the middle pair of pallets you can drive a truck through.  This makes it easy to load the pallets on to a truck (decks are two pallets wide) in the evening when most of the bees have ceased flying.  All hives are smoked, then loaded with a swinger or hitch-hiker forklift. The first row of pallets on one side is put on top of the second row and then loaded on to the truck with entrances facing outwards.  This leaves a ventilation gap right down the truck for the back set of hives. 120 hives took less than half an hour to load.  I was amazed that the last of the flying bees seem to be able to locate their hives on the truck.  I didn't see any fighting. The load was moved off very early next morning leaving hardly a bee behind.


Frank Lindsay
Wellington NZ
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