Moving a hive: three feet, three miles, and everything in between

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Three feet or three miles

Move a hive less than three feet, or more than three miles. That is the rule of thumb, and it rests on one fact: a forager comes back to a remembered place, not to her hive. The National Bee Unit says as much when it sets out an artificial swarm. Put a fresh box on the old stand and the foragers fill it, because the stand is the thing they have learned. 1

The two halves come from different jobs. Three feet is the swarm control figure: Wally Shaw is blunt that more than three feet between the old stand and the new one is essential, because that is what leaves the flying bees behind. 2

Three miles is the other job. It is the distance at which the bees are meant to give up on flying home. Shaw calls it theoretical, and adds that a shorter distance will usually do. 3

What three miles is really doing

Three miles is about 4.8 km. For most of the UK year that is generous. Waggle dances decoded at a Sussex apiary gave mean foraging distances of 493 m in spring, 2,156 m in summer and 1,275 m in autumn. 4

Heather shows the rule up. From a hive in Sheffield during the August heather bloom, the median foraging distance was 6.1 km, which is close to four miles. A quarter of the dances were beyond 7.5 km. 5 Bees working that sort of country already know the ground you are moving them into.

The distances in between

This is the question people actually have. The new site is 800 m away, and neither half of the rule helps. No published UK guideline settles it, so what follows is what beekeepers do, not what anyone recommends. They genuinely disagree about it.

• Move it and take the loss. The foragers that knew the old site fly back to it. If another of your hives stands there, they join it. The moved colony keeps its queen and all its brood, and has a new foraging force within a fortnight.
• Move it late. The fewer bees are flying, the less the move costs. The same short move in October takes a fraction of what it takes in June.
• Move it twice. Take the hive well away, leave it while the bees that learned the old site are replaced, then bring it back. It works. It is also two moves, and people argue about how long the middle stay has to be.
• Block the entrance loosely at the new site, so every bee has to push past something on the way out and takes an orientation flight. Widely done, widely argued about. We could find no UK figure for how well it works.

Shifting a hive a metre a day is the fifth answer, and it is a garden answer. It will get a hive across a lawn. It will not get one across a village.

Strapping and closing up

On its stand a hive is held together by its own weight and by propolis. Lift it and it is a stack of loose boxes. Strap it floor to roof before you touch anything else.

The National Bee Unit names hive straps, nylon straps and ratchet straps for fastening hives down, and warns that overtightening a ratchet can damage a polystyrene hive. 6 That warning carries straight over to a move. Poly wants the strap firm and no more. Then walk round the hive and find the second way out.

• The floor inside the strap, not resting under it.
• Gaps between warped boxes, and any crown board sitting proud.
• The feed hole, and the varroa inspection tray slot.
• The entrance itself, last. Foam seals well and mesh lets air through.

Ventilation, and why bees overheat in transit

A sealed hive in the sun is an oven the bees cannot open. This is the part of the job that kills colonies.

Adult bees hold the brood nest at 34 to 35 °C. 7 In hot weather they do it with water. Foragers fetch it, wet the combs with it, and the nest cools as it evaporates. A hive keeps no water in store. The cooling needs bees that can go and fetch some, and you have shut the door on them.

For bees confined for long distance transport in hot conditions the National Bee Unit asks for a frame feeder half filled with water, with straw, grass or floats so nothing drowns. A light spray through a mesh travelling screen does the same job. 8

• Mesh rather than foam on a warm day.
• Never leave a closed hive standing in a parked vehicle.
• Long journey, hot weather: go at night.

Time of day

Move after dark, or before first light. That is the whole reason for the hour: it is when the foragers are home. Close a hive up at midday and you leave the working half of the colony circling an empty stand.

The two differ. At dusk every bee is in and the hive is at its heaviest. Before dawn the box is cooler, but you are lifting in the dark on wet grass.

Settling them at the far end

Set the hive down level, strap it to the new stand, then pull the block out. Then walk away. Do not lift the roof to see how they took it. They will pour out and look furious, and by morning they will be foraging.

Choose the spot the way you would choose any apiary: reachable in any weather, firm ground that drains, sun, out of the worst of the wind, and never a frost pocket. 6 Choosing and laying out an apiary has the rest, and water for bees covers the supply they need from day one.

If the hive is joining hives you already have, do not park it on the end of a tidy row. The National Bee Unit asks you to point the entrances different ways, vary the colour or the height of the hives, and set them in a curve rather than a line. 9 A row moves bees, and their mites, between your own colonies. Reduce the entrance on anything small, because a freshly moved colony defends itself badly.

What the law asks, and what it does not

Start with what is not there. Moving your own bees between your own sites is not something you have to tell anybody about. No UK rule sets a distance or asks for a permit.

BeeBase itself is voluntary. Defra calls it a voluntary register, says registration is not mandatory in the UK, and each autumn asks beekeepers to check their records. 11 GOV.UK puts registering as something you can do to help the National Bee Unit monitor pests and diseases, and to get local disease alerts. 10

So updating your apiary list after a move is good practice, not a duty. It is also self-interested. The disease alerts are local ones, sent on the strength of where BeeBase thinks your bees are, so a stale entry aims the foulbrood email at a field you no longer use. Registering on BeeBase explains that email.

Foulbrood stops a move dead

There is one situation where movement really is restricted, and there it is absolute. It arrives in two ways.

The first is your own phone call. If you know or suspect American foulbrood, European foulbrood, small hive beetle or Tropilaelaps, you must notify immediately. From that moment you must not remove any hive, bees, combs, bee products, hive debris or appliances from the premises.

That sits in the Order, and it bites before an inspector has been near you. It runs until an authorised person confirms by notice that the disease or pest is absent, or your samples come back clear. 12 GOV.UK gives the same instruction in plain words. Nothing leaves the site, bees or kit or honey, until the disease has been dealt with. 10

The second is a Standstill Notice from a Bee Inspector, which replaces it. It stops bees, equipment and hive products leaving the apiary, and it holds for a minimum of six weeks, until the control work is done and the apiary is examined again. Equipment may come on to the site. Nothing may leave it. The Regional Bee Inspector can license a move to a new standstill site in defined cases, such as a landowner asking for the colonies to go. 13

One point is worth being exact about. A standstill covers the premises, not a district, so there is no foulbrood area you are banned from driving through. The Order does have an infected area power, and a notice under it can ban movement into and out of the area. But it may be used only where a notifiable pest is present: small hive beetle or Tropilaelaps, not foulbrood. Varroa and foulbrood: what UK law asks of you sets out the reporting side. This is the England Order, and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland each have their own.