Hello Stan & All,
I do believe that end of row hives do seem to collect drift bees I also have
an hypothesis that certain hives for whatever reasons seem to draw bees from
other hives. Perhaps the queen has stronger pheromones or perhaps the
foragers seem to like the hive better.

I base my hypothesis on working hives in spring and noting the amount of
brood in a hive. Then I at times find a huge number of bees a few weeks
later which could not have possibly came from the current queen.

It is my opinion that many times bees in a "dink" hive tend to go forage and
return to a strong hive and keep returning until a member.

Also when a hive becomes queenless and does not raise a new queen most the
bees drift to other hives until almost no bees are in the queenless hive.

Part of my success in beekeeping has came from trying to keep only 1 and 2
year old queens. It is my opinion that Italian queens produce in the first
year but many times carniolan queens do poorly the first season but do quite
well the second year.

What are others on the lists opinions?

bob

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