Moving Hives

Yep, I have done it - moved my hives with much trepidation because this was not a simple one metre job but a matter of 100 metres. The original site was excellent from the point of view of wind protection, however the winter sun cannot penetrate the surrounding trees and it was situated in a damp frost pocket as I found out last winter.

100 metres uphill is not the best place to move all at 1 metre intervals over a very long period of time!! I don't think the ladies would approve of that anyway, being continually bounced around for days and days!

So four days ago, I taped up the entrances, put a bit of wood between the tape and the entrance as I reckoned that some of the ladies might have a go at nibbling the tape - not good for their digestion methinks. Then with help, carried the hives up to their new site which had been prepared for them. This new site is totally exposed to our fairly regular hurricanes, but is dry and gets the winter sun. A plastic netting windbreak seems to be doing a good job, providing it doesn't decide to take off and disappear into the atlantic.

Today was sunny and I opened the entrances. Would they all stream back to their original site?? I had left one of the hives on the original site in order to collect any 'lost ladies'. I also put some grass at the open entrances to tell them that there was something different with the outside world, and put some coloured discs above the entrances for recognition purposes.

I spent several hours watching what was happening and ready to direct the traffic in the right direction. But after crawling over the grass, circling around a few times photographing all this new stuff they seemed to go back in and get more of their buddies to come out and explore this strange new world.

So, thankfully it seems to have worked. I didn't have to redirect any of the ladies at all!!