How long is their memory?

[Nirakaro]

I want to move one of my hives to somewhere about half a mile away. Difficult to move them directly, so I'm thinking to take them 'on holiday' far enough away that they'll forget this local landscape, then bring them back after a while. How long do they need to be away for?

 

[Erichalfbee]

2 to 3 weeks

 

[Finman]

2 to 3 weeks

Over one month

 

[blackcloud]

They can pick up on their old flight paths and return amazingly quickly- wait for your existing flying bees to die off as Dani says 2-3w
Alternatively move them much further-at least 3 linear miles-but there is anecdotal chatter of even that being insufficient.

 

[Beedogg]

There was another thread on this recently with some good advice on moving colonies more than 3m and less than 3 miles. Moving Hives

I recently moved 3 colonies about 150m and it was achieved without too much difficulty. I left a nuc at the old site and each day collected those foragers that had returned there and poured them back into the moved hives. After 48 hrs the number of 'lost' foragers had declined from a nuc-full to a few hundred. And after 4 or 5 days there were none.

Obviously some will have died off in that time. But most seem to have re-orientated and 'forgotten' their old location.