Layout advice please

[Wombat2]

I'm facing a siuation that the best location for up to at least 12 maybe more hives is in a straight line along a dam wall running east west with the hives facing north (southern hemisphere - sub-tropical with no winter to speak of)

I read here and elsewhere there can be a problem of drift in such a situation.

Anyone have ideas on geometric shapes and colours to paint on the fronts of the hives to tell the bees which is theirs?

[Michael Bush]

>Anyone have ideas on geometric shapes and colours to paint on the fronts of the hives to tell the bees which is theirs?

Paint them however suits your fancy.  The bees will figure it out.

[little john]

If you Google "bee houses", "Slovakia", "Carniola" etc, you'll soon come across Eastern European methods of hive placement and paint schemes. Quite often hives are stacked 3 or 4 high, maybe 20 or more in a row, butted up close together - and yet the bees seem to manage to find their own entrances ok. Often they have trailers stacked like that, too.

If you Google "Anton Janscha", you'll see some exotic examples of painted hives, although most of the guys over there settle for block colours - squares, circles, diagonal stripes and so forth ...

LJ