my last time

[lee]

as you know, i moved a hive that was in an all day shaed to get it to do better, but most of the bees did not won't to move they went back to where the old hive was,so after a week i put the bees that left the hive back in it. put down the newspaper, put some weeds in front of the door and guess what thay went back to where the old hive was again. what if i put these bee back in the hive and move them about 25 miles away for about a week and they bring them back home.  and it is to late to get a new queen to make a new hive.

[Michael Bush]

>as you know, i moved a hive that was in an all day shaed to get it to do better, but most of the bees did not won't to move they went back to where the old hive was,so after a week i put the bees that left the hive back in it. put down the newspaper, put some weeds in front of the door and guess what thay went back to where the old hive was again. what if i put these bee back in the hive and move them about 25 miles away for about a week and they bring them back home. and it is to late to get a new queen to make a new hive.

If you want to move bees less than 2 miles you have to trigger reorienation.  If you don't, you've already seen the results of that.

You can trigger reorientation simply by putting a leafy branch in front of the entrance at the new location that they have to fly through.  If you put a box at the old location and gather up the bees tha moved there and move the box to right next to the new location (after dark with it closed up) and put a branch in front if it also they will reorient to the new location also and if the box is empty foundation or combs they will probably move into the other hive on their own.  If they don't, then shake them out after they have reoriented and they will go into the hive at the new location.

You can also move them 2 miles or more away and then move them back, but why work so hard and why disrupt the bees twice getting reoriented?

[lee]

michael bush i did that all ready and they went back to where the old hive was.  :(

[Michael Bush]

I've moved them hudnreds of yards on dozens on occasions using the branch method with no problems.  A few end up back at the old place the first night SOMETIMES.  But I've never had any there the following night.  And I move them in the middle of the day usually.  I'd recommend closing them up and moving them in one piece after dark, but I seldom have the help to do that so I end up moving them during the day a box at a time by hand.

If you take all the stragglers and put them in a swarm box (a well ventilated nuc) with a jar of 1:1 syrup to eat and put them in the basement (making sure it's beeproof of course) and wait 72 hours, and then dump them in the hive at the new location, it will trigger reorientation also.