Lost bees ( drifting)

[wayne]

I just read an artical on drifting among bees in bee yards where all hives are the same color and evenly spaced.  Does anyone have experience with this? Does anyone take steps to make each hive identifiable to its bees?


wayne

[Brian D. Bray]

The standard practice back in the sixties was to line up the hives like tombstones at Arlington Memorial.  Evenly spaced and all the same color.
Since every hive was the same color and located only a few feet from each other drifting was a common occurance.  
Bees are like Pigeons in that they both make several circles to orientate and look over the home turf before going on their flight.  Even pigeons will enter the wrong loft when there are several together that look alike.  So in that instance difting can happen to birds also.
With drifting the result is that some hives will end up with the majority of the bees will others suffer.  Usually I've found the perimeter hives benifit and the centeral hives suffer from drifting as heavy laden bees will set down at the closest thing that looks like home in the general area of home.  Their GPS seems to work in yards more than feet or inches.