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Moving Hive to new location

Posted: August 3rd, 2017, 11:14 am
by BeeGuy123
Hi,

I wanted to move my hive about a mile, so I had a few questions. Does it matter what time of year that I move my hive? The date is currently 8/3/17, my locations is western New York. I would like to move before winter, so does the time of year matter at all? Since only a mile I was going to lock the bees in, then move hive to new location at night and keep locked up for for a few days, then when I opened the hive back up only open a small part of the entrance and put some branches in front to help them reorient themselves. Please let me know if you have any suggestions.

Thank You!!

Re: Moving Hive to new location

Posted: August 3rd, 2017, 11:53 am
by Allen Dick
When and how far to move I depends on a lot of factors. After a long rainy spell or cold period when the bees have not been flying at all, they forget after about 3 days of being confined.

An experienced beekeeper can pretty well tell by how the bees act when the hive is moved a little bit. If they follow the hive as your move it they probably are going to be okay no matter where you moving to however, if there's a strong honey flow on and the bees are coming and going without looking to see where the hive is and just come in and go out without circling you know you're going to have trouble if you move the hive more than a few feet and less than whatever distance they may be foraging at.

Your ideas about confining them are right IMO, the only questions being how you can keep them in at the new location without smothering them or losing brood from lack of water while confined.

There are other things you can do like making a small split to leave at the original location to see if bees return. Most of the bees will stay at the new location and any that return to the split can be moved over to the new location later and recombined at your leisure