Hello Milt,
It would be nice if bees could be moved this short distance and call it their
"new"
home; but it does not work that way.
Once a bee establishes POINT A as her home, she will always return to THAT
SPOT
even if there is no hive there, and just die there. The only way to relocate
bees to any new location irrespective of whether the distance involved is
only 5-10 feet,
half mile, or even up to 3 miles is to move the hive to a new location that
is GREATER than 3 miles away from the original location, leave it on that
"temporary"
location for 30 days, and then you can return it to the NEW SPOT that you
wanted.
Read any bee book, or ask any honey bee RESEARCHER, and you will find that
what I
just wrote is very factual. There is a time honored saying "A hive of bees
can be moved less than 2 feet or over 3 miles, but nothing in between".
Bees do not have a "learning, thinking" mind like yours, but have a pre-fixed
mind
provided them by nature to do all the things that they were designed to do
living in the wilds of nature. After the worker emerges from her cell, she
does 100% inside
hive work for the first week or ten days of her life and might take a few play
flights around the hive to become slightly oriented with the close by
vicinity. When she becomes 19 days old, she ceases her hive duty work and
becomes a forager for
honey and pollen at a distance as far as 3 miles from the hive, and she dies
just
3 weeks later. She does not IDENTIFY her hive by its size, color, or number
on it,
but identifies it by the "SPOT OF EARTH" the hive was on IN REFERENCE TO ALL
THE
OTHER THINGS AROUND THAT SPOT. Hence, if you move that hive just 5 feet, the
returning bees canNOT find it, and will cluster around the original spot and
just die there.
I strongly suggest that you do some reading in a good book; and books written
more than about 10 years ago are really becoming obsolete because of so many
new findings in the last 20 years like mites, pheromones, resistant diseases,
Africanized bees, hygienic behavior, SMR queens, IPM, and much more. I would
recommend THE BEGINNERS HANDBOOK, 3rd Edition of April 1998, by Dr. Diana
Sammataro and the "bible", THE HIVE AND HONEY BEE, the EXTENSIVELY REVISED
EDITION of 1992, by 35 of Americas finest bee scientists and bee researchers,
published by Dadant
I hope I have helped.
George Imirie
Certified EAS Master Beekeeper
Beginning my 71st year of beekeeping near Washington, DC
Author of George's monthly PINK PAGES @
www.beekeeper.org/george_imirie/index.html
Author of American Beekeeping Federation NewsLetter Hobbyist Tips
Past President of Maryland State Beekeepers Assn.
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