Hi Trish
Thanks for picking up the thread! I prefer to discuss these things, rather than to talk to an echo. You wrote

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.

In my experience, even with widely spaced yards, there is drift, and it seems to be driven by the direction that the incoming bees are coming from. In other words, if there is a major source to the north, the hives on the northern portion of the apiary may get ganged. \

By widely spaced, I mean like the bee yards I designed when at the Dyce Lab. We spaced the hives at least 2 meters apart, and placed them in small groups, also spaced apart from each other. The, there was a wide space in the middle of the yard to place a large truck. The whole apiary was probably 100 x 100, which required a spot in a field or pasture. 

My home yard now is quite a bit smaller than that. There are 12 hives with about 1 meter spacing, to keep down the size of the electric fence line. But the hives are fairly distinctive, old and new boxes, some colored. Also, I usually let the weeds grow up a bit so each hive may have a distinctive clump of weeds. I seldom see drifting which leads to strong and weak hives. 

But there is the other sort of drifting where the bees are pretty well homogenized; therein lies the real problem. This sort of homogenization apparently leads to exponential mite increases, whereas with a very wide spacing (dozens of meters between hives) minimizes the mite and disease build up. So, too, does keeping bees in non-moveable frame hives, or at least not moving the frames more than a couple times a year.

Disclaimer: I don't recommend any of these practices which lead to wide dispersal of hives. To me, it isn't practical. I am brainwashed to think that the whole apiary is a unit and has to be designed so the truck is easily accessible. Also, the notion of not moving frames from hive to hive is a huge step backward. It may have benefits, but I question whether the outweigh the benefits of managing the apiary, not the hives.

Peter L Borst

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