How to move a beehive: the three feet or three miles rule

Moving a hive to a new apiary twenty kilometres away is straightforward. Moving it ten metres across a garden is the difficult job, and the reason is how bees find their way home. Get it wrong and the foragers fly back to the empty spot where the hive used to be, cluster there and die, while the colony, a few metres away, loses its entire field force. Here is why that happens, the rule that avoids it, and how to do both kinds of move without losing bees.

Why a short move is the hard one

A young worker learns the position of her hive on orientation flights, circling in front of the entrance before she ever forages. From then on she navigates home by landmarks and the sun, and she returns to the precise spot where the entrance was, not to the hive itself. Move the hive a few metres and she arrives at empty air, searches, and usually fails to find the new position. Move it a long way, somewhere with no familiar landmarks, and she has no choice but to reorient to where she finds herself.

The three feet or three miles rule

The traditional rule follows from that: move a hive less than three feet, about a metre, or more than three miles, about five kilometres. A metre is close enough that returning foragers still find the entrance. Three miles is far enough, in most landscapes, that little the bees know is still in view, so they reorient. Anything in between is the danger zone. Some beekeepers work to two miles; over open country with long sight lines, or where forage between the two sites overlaps, more distance is safer.

Moving a hive a few metres

There are two ways to get a hive across a garden or to the other side of an apiary:

• A metre a day. Move the hive about a metre each evening, or less when it is windy, until it reaches its new position. Turning the entrance to a new direction is done the same way, a small step at a time.
• Away and back. Take the hive more than three miles away for about three weeks, long enough for the foragers who knew the old site to be replaced by bees that have only known the temporary one, then bring it back and place it in the new spot.

After any move, lean a branch or a board across the front of the entrance so that departing bees have to push past it, notice that something has changed and make fresh orientation flights. If some bees still cluster at the old site, put a spare box with a frame of comb there during the day and shake the collected bees into the hive at dusk.

Moving to a new apiary

Prepare the new site before the move: stands in place and levelled, the landowner's agreement if it is someone else's land, and the forage and water checked. Where apiaries must be registered, update the registration, and in some places moving bees between regions needs a permit or a health certificate, so check before crossing a state or regional boundary. Gather the kit: straps or hive staples, a travel screen or foam to close the entrance, a hive barrow or a helper, and a vehicle the hive can travel level in.

On the night

1. Wait until every forager is home, at dusk or after dark, then close the entrance with foam, a closed block or a travel screen.
2. Strap the boxes together, floor to roof, so nothing can slide apart if the hive is tipped or jolted.
3. Give it ventilation. A closed colony heats up fast. An open mesh floor or a travel screen in place of the crown board keeps it from overheating, especially in warm weather or with a strong colony.
4. Lift it level, with a helper for anything heavier than a single box, and load it so the frames run front to back in the vehicle; braking then pushes the frames along their length instead of swinging them into each other.
5. Drive gently, and do not leave the vehicle parked in the sun.

At the new site

Put the hive on its stand, let it settle for a few minutes and then open the entrance. Lean a branch across the front so the bees reorient in the morning. Do not inspect for about a week unless you have to, and if there is little forage at the new site yet, feed the colony while it finds its way around. Check a few days later that the bees are flying normally and carrying pollen in.

Update the records

Note the date of the move and the new site against the hive. A colony's harvest and strength only mean something when you know where it was standing, and moves are exactly when that gets lost. Where to put a beehive covers choosing the new site, comparing apiary sites covers judging it afterwards, and the apiaries map in BeehiveMind keeps every site and its hives in one place.