I have built my hive bases to have two separate entrances. Rather than having one entrance as wide as the hive box, I have fitted a wooden strip in the middle portion of that "wide entrance area", to leave openings about 7cm wide, and 1cm high. The thought of having entrances like this was inspired by something I had seen on the film "City of Bees", where fanning bees were drawing air into the hive on one side, and expelling air from the hive on the other side.
The purpose of this letter to the forum is to tell of an observation which I find most interesting, namely that the bees almost exclusively use the left-hand-side entrance for their movements in and out of the hive. The thing that I find most interesting about this observation is that it is happening on each of my hives. Even when there are large numbers of bees entering or exiting the hive, nearly all of the bees use that left-hand-side entrance. It is only occasionally that bees make use of the other entrance (maybe 1 bee in 50).
Does anyone have an insight into why this may be so?
