>>I'm as curious as you as to why they drift to distant hives. I strongly
suspect that olfaction is involved. I have no idea whether they simply getlost, and drift to the odorof hives upwind, or whether during foraging flights they investigate otherhives and don't get stopped by guards<<
Randy, our bi-directional bee counter data was collected at Aberdeen before any mites were discovered there. We essentially got the same results as you. We also did some experiments of bees finding apiaries and new homes after being dumped off along roadsides. I remember we couldn't get it published, either it was thought to be of no consequence, or the editors didn't believe our findings.
I may have a copy on a dead computer. We did the study after the MT commercial beekeepers rejected a proposal to require netted loads of bees. The 'consensus' was that if bees fell off trucks, or got left behind when a truck stopped for refueling, a break, etc. that these bees would simply starve off.
As I've said before, a couple of students did studies where they shook out packages of bees, marked the bees in the packages by dusting with colored chalk, then went out 1/4 mile, 1/2 mile, 1 mile in 4 compass directions and dumped the marked bees out on the ground. For example, bees to south might be yellow, north blue, etc. Same with distance. So color indicated where they were dumped.
Some of those bees found the 'target' apiary before the students could even get back. Bottom line, the students observed bees from all distances and all directions, flying into, and joining colonies - with a picture of 4 marked bees in a queen's retinue the highlight of the work. The students also found:1) the farther the distance, the fewer the numbers of marked bees found the target apiary, the closer, relatively more showed up, and2) bees from the most distant locations continued to show up one to a few days later.
The dumped bees weren't languishing at the side of the road, waiting to die.
One note, the marked bees were from a different queen/package supplier than the colonies in each target apiary.
The numbers of bees finding the target colonies from the various distances were what one might expect, if the bees headed out in various compass directions after being dumped. Those closer to the 'target' were more likely to pick up wind borne odor cues. Those far away, I'd guess those that went the wrong way probably found some other colonies to move into. Even if they didn't, the arrival from distant locations, one or more days late, suggest that they were still searching for a home.
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