Foragers join wrong colony?

[rookie2531]

  I hived my nucs two days ago. I had to redo the stand as it wasn't long enough for three ten frames, but had one ten frame and two 5 f. Nucs. So I moved them temp. And set the stand up, moved them back and let them settle for a few hours as they were all over in the air. When I came back everything was calm so I proceeded with the transfer. Now the exact location of the new entrances may be off by a little but no more than a foot. The new hives are in the same order they were before, 1,2,3 side by side with a few inches in between, just as before. The middle one has very little foragers and when I went in to feed them all today, the other two drank all there syrup but the middle one was stillpretty full with only about 5 bees up there drinking. This hive also was the only one that I found the queen in when I was doing the transfer, so I know she was good then.

  My question is that would that confuse them enough to go to a ddifferent hive and would that new hive accept them? I am not too worried about it since one hive is doing so well that I can steal some brood/stores from it if I have too.

[rober]

some research has shown that that something distinguishing on the front of the hive helps prevent drifting. an x of white tape on the ctr hive could be enough in a 3 hive scenario.

[GSF]

I thought when they got in the general area they went by smell? I don't know that's why I'm asking.

[rwlaw]

From experience, 3's don't work, the middle always suffers. If you can, spread them apart, but definitely turn the outboard hives so the entrances are at a thirty degree angle of the middle.
Take the strongest hive and swap it with the weakest, you might have to shake a couple frames of bees from the other hive (find the queen first) at the entrance (the bees that haven't orientated will crawl into the hive), to give them a shot in the arm

[BeeMaster2]

Rookie,
This week I removed a hive, a 20" diameter log and all from a guys front yard. I was told that it was lowered down from its original 50' height. After cutting the log into a small enough section to lift into my truck, with help, and getting it into the truck, I rechecked the log that was left on the branch and realized that I hadn't cut through tree rot but it was badly collapsed comb. The next day I cut the comb out and it was all destroyed. I enticed the surviving bees into a nuc and then placed it on top of a week hive. Last night I opened that nuc and shook all of the bees out. They returned to the weak hive and slowly moved it with a little help from a LGO q-tip on the front of the hive. No fights or any problems. This added approximately 500-1000 bees to this hive. I am pretty sure they were all full of honey from the damaged comb which helps them to bee accepted.
Jim

[rookie2531]

Rober- I was thinking something like putting big a black square, triangle and circle on each.

Rwlaw- I have them inside a dog kennel sized area for now, until I build up some more hives. I didn't want animals getting to them and destroying them my first year. I really don't have much more room in there.

Jim-  I quess they did get accepted, since they sure aren't coming and going like before. It was probably easier to get accepted with few at a time also. Im sure I will have to add some frames of bees, since I only have about 1.5 months until frost. Probably this weekend.

Gary- I dont know about the smell either.

[rober]

I've got an old iron brick star that I painted red & hung it on the front of the ctr hive of 3 hives. all 3 hives are doing fine. there's about 14" between the hives. you'll get some drifting no matter what but it's usually not enough to matter.