Moving Bees

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Vergilius

Field Bee
Joined
Aug 24, 2010
Messages
955
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6
Location
Dorset / East Sussex
Hive Type
National
Number of Hives
6ish
I want to move my bee hive from my front yard to the end of my garden.The distance is approximately 40 metres. I am doing this because we may extend our house and this will come into contact withh my current apiary site I also wish to expand to three colonies next year. When and how sshould I do the move?

Thanks Ben P
 
AFAIK you should only be moving the hive a foot or so each day. With that in mind, why not start the progressive move now and prepare the new apiary site too.
 
the easiest way to do this would be to find a suitable site somewhere greater than two miles away from your apiary (a friendly local beek / local association apiary? may be able to help.....)

move your hive to the new site for two / three weeks, then move back to the new apiary at your home site (see other posts on how / when to move hives)

any flying bees will have re-orientated themselves to the new site, so will then re-orientate themselves to the new home apiary.

I would make the move as soon as possible before the cold weather gets here, as moving hives when the bees have clustered is generally not a good idea.....

if you are totally unable to find a new "out apiary", you will have to go with the one foot per couple of days option, which isn't that practical or satisfactory in most situations.....
 
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or you could do it in one go in the depths of winter...otherwise 3 ft every flying day...if not a flying day, give them an extra flying day to re-orientate.
 
if you are totally unable to find a new "out apiary", you will have to go with the one foot per couple of days option, which isn't that practical or satisfactory in most situations.....

Especially as it will take you over 4 months even without allowing a day or three between moves.

Suspect the only way to do it is as winmag suggests
 
or you could do it in one go in the depths of winter...otherwise 3 ft every flying day...if not a flying day, give them an extra flying day to re-orientate.

Don't move bees in the depths of winter, you will disturb / dislodge the cluster which will most likely cause the brood / bees to chill to a point that they can't recover from.....
 
The age-old beekeeping rule of thumb for moving a colony is "less than 3 feet or more than 3 miles"

You can choose your time - and if you follow the above, you will not go far wrong excepting on how long they need to be at another site before (back) moving again.

I think your expansion plans are irrelevant in the context of moving your (one or two) hive(s) as you would presumably not be moving your extra colony(ies), or the logistics would be similar anyway.

As you have not yet even decided whether to extend your house or not, there seems to be very little urgency, so you could move them (very gently) in the dormant season when they are unlikely to be flying for a couple of weeks (and take the added precautions associated with such a move).

I would reservedly agree with winmag270 - the reservation being only with the distance involved.

RAB
 

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