Turning Hive 180 Degrees

[SuffolkPaul]

Good Morning all,

well I'm now a few months into bee keeping and enjoying it very much. My Nuc has grown to a stong 60,000 + group of lovely bees who are happy and hardly need any smoke when inspecting.

However my classic error is that when i set my hive up I faced it the way i wanted to face it. However and very bizarrely some thin unusual has happened, and that is ive changed my mind! Now i want to move the hive 180 degrees so the little darlings face a fence ( 4M away), rather than their flight path being directly between my raised beds. I can no longer get and bee suit on to pick beans, spring Onions, and conduct weeding.

So two days ago i moved the hive 30 degrees at twilight, and it did not cause any problems, so now i want to move it another 30 degrees. I'm hoping to move the hive 30 degree every two days so by next Friday it will be facing the right way. I've not used branches, leaves or anything infront of the Hive.

Anyone got any thoughts pertaining to incremetal degree manipulations? If so kindly share?

Best Paul

 

[enrico]

30 degrees every couple of days is fine
E

 

[birdsandbees]

I had the same situation earlier this year, well in so much that I needed to rotate a hive 180 degrees, I did as you suggest and slowly rotated it so that each move they could still easily find the entrance, took a while as I was only doing so on a weekly basis but as long as you don't go too far each turn they will be fine.

 

[YorkshireBees]

You would be surprised how fast they adjust.

I use a modified demaree method of swarm control and rotate the top entrance 180 degs each time I inspect and at first there is confusion but it doesn't take long (by the end of the day) for them to find the bottom entrance (idea being to bleed off the bees from the top box to the bottom box).
I know this is slightly different in that they search downwards rather than having to find only one entrance but I believe they adjust quite quickly.