Moving bees

[babnik42]

I recently got two abandoned hives and will be getting a third soon. I installed these in my garden on temporary blocks about 3-4 metres apart. I have since made a base for my hives which is about 2 metres or so long and I wish to move my hives on to it. I have a few questions :

1) If I put the stand between the two hives, I'd need to move each hive about a metre, maybe 2 maximum to get them to their final position. Is this ok?

2) If it is OK, should I do one at a time, and let them settle, or can I go ahead and do them at the same time?

3) The third hive should be coming soon. Should I wait a few days after moving the existing hives before introducing the third one?

4) Perhaps this should have been the first question. Is it ok to have hives at about 40-50 cm spacing? Does this cause any confusion, robbing etc etc

As you can see I'm a newbie, so any help would be appreciated. thanks

 

[enrico]

Move the outside hives inwards. The bees will go to their original hive position, won't find it and will go to the nearest hive. If you move the hives on the outer limit in they will always go to the right hive (In theory) Three feet is fine. work on the above theory and think like a bee. If you move more than one hive at once make sure their proper hive will always be the closest one to where they were to start with!
Personally I would leave everything where it is. Put the new hive in somewhere...anywhere... and wait until winter. After they have stopped flying in the cold weather move all the hives to where you want them. When they come out again they will re adjust and bob's your uncle!
You can have the hives as close as you like but remember that you need good working space inbetween each hive. It is always useful to have enough room between each hive to do an AS. I would space the original hives as wide as you can! This will leave room for you to move hives round as you require.
Make sure you leave a flat space by each hive to put supers down. I use stands that are three times the length of a hive. this allows me to use the stand for putting supers or for AS manipulation with no problems.
Hope this helps
E

 

[joolsp]

wait until winter
E

Depends on where in France babnik42 is surely - if its warm/mild area then bees may be flying in winter

 

[babnik42]

Depends on where in France babnik42 is surely - if its warm/mild area then bees may be flying in winter

I'm sure there will be a time when they do not fly. South West France, we do get freezing temperatures for a while so I'm sure they'll stop flying when it's that cold.

 

[m100]

You can move them less than 3ft (1m) or more than 3 miles (5km) . On a day with lots of flying bees you can do two moves or more a day or 2ft (60cm)

40cm apart doesn't occur in nature but isn't a major problem, you'll get drifting downwind but you can orientate the hives so they all point out from the middle and then they can be really close.

Direction of hive entrance when looking from above

hive 1----hive 2----hive 3
left ------ ahead ----right


Or if the centre hive was facing south position the other hives facing west and east respectively