Beemaster's International Beekeeping Forum
BEEKEEPING LEARNING CENTER => GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. => Topic started by: UrbisAgricola on November 03, 2017, 12:58:15 pm
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I am reading BEEKEEPING AT BUCKFAST ABBEY. Bro. Adam describes placing hives in groups of four with each facing a different direction in order to combat drift. If you have tried this or something like it, how well did it seem to work? Any downsides you found in practice?
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Mine are facing about 3 different directions. They all seem to be content with it.
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Thanks.
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Mine are all facing the same direction and each about 3 feet apart. They and I all seem happy about it.
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Yeah, that's how mine are. They are healthy but I do notice there is drift to the hives on the ends. Reading Buckfast piqued my curiously.
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Due to ants and or snow, my hives are elevated off the ground and on stands facing south. Facing south is for wind. Some of my hives are only 10 inches apart but painted different colors. Each entrance has a unique color and some kind of entrance reducer. I don't have drift that I can notice with my 20 beautiful healthy hives. Of course drone drift is not included, as that's what drones do, they drift to any hive they wish.
I'm just stating what works for me. If this text conflicts with Brother Adam's book; by all means follow Brother Adam.
Blessings
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FWIW - I ran an experiment a few years ago to try and put a figure on just how close entrances could be on the same side of a hive array without drifting occurring. In order to establish this, I set up two 'quad-nuc' (4x5-frame) hives next to each other thusly:
(https://images2.imgbox.com/77/a0/dhewi2ut_o.jpg) (http://imgbox.com/dhewi2ut)
The box entrances were 9" or so from each other, with the two entrances 'across the gap' being around 12-14". (Can't remember that exact measurement offhand - it's written down somewhere).
During Season 1, the colonies in the yellow and green slots at the furthest ends of the array became very strong; the colonies in the yellow and green slots 'across the gap' were of medium strength; whereas the colonies in the blue and white slots in both boxes had become depleted and were struggling. Very clearly, drifting had been occurring in favour of colonies within end slots, despite the bees being Carniolans which are generally considered to be the least likely of all bees to engage in drifting.
Towards the end of Season 1, and in view of the above, colonies in the blue and white slots were removed, extra brood given to them, and re-housed. Those entrances were then sealed, the outer dividers in both boxes removed leaving just the central divider in place, thus creating 2x 10-frame cavities within each box, with their entrances then being some 24" apart. The separation distance between the hives was increased such that the distance between the adjacent end entrances was 18".
Throughout Season 2, all four colonies developed without any obvious drifting having taken place. An 18" entrance separation was thus established as being the minimum for these bees, at this location, for hives with entrances located on the same side.
Following this experiment, those entrance arrangements were stripped away, and four fresh entrances made, one on each face of the box - following which no obvious drifting has been observed.
Hives within this apiary are placed randomly - some in rows, some not - all are distanced from each other by at least 18", usually by several feet. The majority of entrances face South or South-East, with a view to benefitting from the early morning sun, but not all - indeed, this is a feature which doesn't appear to make a huge difference.
LJ
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https://photos.app.goo.gl/3P10AB7VQLPY1ywj1
I am not sure the link works, trying google for hosting photos.
These are the hives for this year as a result of splitting the middle hive. The hive on the right was my first split. It did OK but I didn't take any honey from it. The hive on the left was the second split. It was doing OK but in July it crashed and I suspect the middle one got most the honey. It is normal to get drift when splitting especially when they are so close. Even though the one on the right is farther away I think the one on the left failed because it was under a mouse attack and split a month later. Our summer was horrible this year which screwed up the flows. Hardly got any golden rod and it usually amounts to two boxes per hive.
FB link
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=635477890174465&set=a.635477853507802.1073741829.100011367786490&type=3
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Hi Ace, I could not get the link to work.
Hi Lil John, I believe bees see blue and white as almost the same color, blue is brighter though, with their ultraviolet vision. Bees cannot detect red, varroa is red, not a coincidence to me.
Blessings
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Hi Van - hope this finds you well, and not itching too much !
I remember reading some research on hive entrances (can't put my hands on it right now), which showed that location is the most important factor, followed by entrance orientation (direction). Then nearby landmarks. Colour comes way down the list of what's important - with shapes and patterns having more effect than block colours.
My reasons for using coloured entrances on those experimental hives was to give the colonies the best possible chance of not drifting. But these days, I've pretty-much given-up on using coloured entrances - for when you think about it, natural hive entrances in trees are all exactly the same colour !
As for bees not seeing 'red' - that may well be true, but a large number of my hives are red, and yet the bees manage to find their way home perfectly ok. Terra-cotta red is a favourite colour of floor paint over here, and it turns up at Boot (bring & buy) Sales with some regularity, as folk tend to buy far more paint than they need. Such paint is 100% waterproof and very hard-wearing ... and tends to be fairly cheap too, as it's invariably unwanted.
LJ
I did find this (related to queen-drifting - not quite the same thing):
https://www.apidologie.org/articles/apido/pdf/2008/06/m08048.pdf
Pairs of nucs six-feet apart, with opposing entrances ...
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Hi Ace, I could not get the link to work.
I added a FB link if it helps
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Thank you Lil John, Buddy, bee sting itch is much better.
I believe I have read the article you mentioned, conclusion: shape and objects at entrance(s) serve as more importance than color pertaining to drift. A simple dark color "X" place above entrance showed less drift.
I believe bees see red as a shade of gray.
Blessings
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The statement that bees cannot see red is basically true but not 100%. 99.99% yes. I use a red head light long before sunrise to close up my hives to move them. It works well but there is always at least one or two bees out of the dozen hives that can see the red light and come right to my face.
Jim
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Jim, unless you had a very expensive filter on your light source the light is not 100% red. Even in a dark room the light is not 100% red and that is why you keep your photo paper sealed until you use it. And don't forget bees can sense inferred which your body will always emanate. Due to the blood flow to your head it will be a hot spot.
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Red Lazer: just out of couriousosity I shined a red lazer at guard bees on the hive entrance. The bees did not react. The bees acted completely blind to this super bright red spot. This was done during daylight, not at night.
Blessings
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I would think if it was a real lasar it might have cooked or blinded the bee.
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Yep, Ace, an oblation laser would have turned those bees to gas in an instant.
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Even some pointers have enough power to set off a match head.
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Hi Ace, I could not get the link to work.
Van I changed the google link. Please see if it works. Thanks.
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Yes, Ace, the link works. Nice looking hives. You need a ladder, do ya?
Blessings
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Those are some useful comments, folks. Many thanks. I'm open to more input as well.
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Super! Now I can say goodbye to photobucket.
No ladder. I made a box jack that will lift the supers up 2" so I can slip an escape board in between. With no bees in the box it is not as hard to get the top box off. I don't have to worry about smashing a lot of bees.
Well not that you can see how close my hives are plus the fact that this is how I split I can tell you that the drift occurs within the first few days or one week. After the hive starts raising its queen the population stays constant until the queen starts laying. My success at this I believe is flow related which is weather related. You see that my hives are all white. I agree with LJ. Color of the hive has little effect on drift. It may play a roll in thermo dynamics but that is all I can see.
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Hives facing north do not do well in my climate... The downside of drift is overstated. Who cares what hive my bees are in?
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Hives facing north do not do well in my climate...
Interesting. Query whether in a milder climate such as England, the benefit of combating drift outweighs the climate concern.
Brother Adam asks your question almost exactly, ("...what does it matter if the bees are accepted in a hive not their own") The problem with drift, as he sees it, is drifting is the fastest way to spread disease from one hive to another, he thinks it is responsible for the loss of many queens, and colonies in which drifting bees accumulate (typically at the end of a row) fail to produce crops corresponding to their strength due to an imbalance and lack of harmony in the composition of the colony.
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I'm open to more input as well.
As with most beekeeping issues - there is no one definitive way to arrange one's hives to minimise drifting (which in my opinion IS important, for as you point out: a serious imbalance can indeed be fatal. Also, drifting is one known vector of Varroa infestation - robbing being another).
As examples: some folk arrange boxes in circles: http://theapiarist.org/circle-splits/
If you download an earlier copy of Warre's book (rather than the 12th Edition, which most people focus on), you'll find several photographs and a wood-cut within the first twenty pages showing large numbers of hives packed very closely together, and lined-up in straight rows: http://warre.biobees.com/warre_5th_edition.pdf
Finally, Johann Dzierzon - one of the greatest beekeepers that ever lived - used to favour the 'Twin-Stock', which is basically an arrangement of two hives clamped together, back-to-back. He used to then position these in various configurations - often as multiples. Here's an example where he's placed four twin-stocks directly on top of each other, with each twin-stock oriented at 90 degrees to the twin-stock below it:
(https://images2.imgbox.com/05/06/UZzHmuKd_o.jpg) (http://imgbox.com/UZzHmuKd)
Each person will no doubt swear on a stack of bibles that their method is superior to that of any other. Guess each beekeeper has to find out by trial and error what works best for them ...
LJ
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Thank you, LJ.
How long have you been maintaining your "A Heretics Guide to Beekeeping"? I think your analogy to fundamentalism is apt. In the US, depending on how you count, there are something like 30,000 religious denominations. They can't all be right, but they can be pretty dogmatic. It's about the same with beekeepers sometimes.
The interesting thing about beekeeping, is that, for me, I find tradition is a better (though it does not have to be exclusive) guide than logic and what passes for "science" in most areas (including religion, to borrow from your analogy). However, beekeeping seems to be something constantly evolving.
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>The problem with drift, as he sees it, is drifting is the fastest way to spread disease from one hive to another, he thinks it is responsible for the loss of many queens, and colonies in which drifting bees accumulate (typically at the end of a row) fail to produce crops corresponding to their strength due to an imbalance and lack of harmony in the composition of the colony.
Drifting is inevitable at some level:
"The percentage of foragers originating from different colonies within the apiary ranged from 32 to 63 percent"--from a paper, published in 1991 by Walter Boylan-Pett and Roger Hoopingarner in Acta Horticulturae 288, 6th Pollination Symposium (see Jan 2010 edition of Bee Culture, 36)
I think all your efforts will merely lower the percentage from 63 percent down to 32 percent. Any disease will get passed just as well at 32 percent...
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We had a drift one summer where the bees were in a line with structures behind them.
The bees could not fit into the end hives and our solution was to shift supers of bees back to the center hives and hope they stayed.
I believe drifting is due to lack of back ground structures to orientate to, where we have no structures such as in the middle of a crop we do face bees in all directions and in small groups, about 8-10 per group with the groups slightly different in shape.
I agree with Michael B in that some drift occurs every time we shift our bees, so the weaker hives are put in the front row.
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Oldbeavo, probably a good point about structures. Incidentally, Brother Adam provided pictures that demonstrated drift (you can see supers stacked high on the ends of rows of about a dozen hives). The photo is in a large open field--exactly what you are talking about.
Bro. Adam also acknowledges that drift cannot be eliminated.
I'm not marrying myself to Br. Adam, just giving him voice here since I am currently reading his book, it was the genesis of my question and he has passed from this world and is thus unable to weigh in this discussion thread.
Here are follow up questions for anyone who cares to weigh in:
1. Assuming a person lives in a mild climate in terms of low temps, what would be the advantage of putting hives all facing the same direction? (dodging bee traffic? Facing them east so early sun gets the bees out foraging?)
2. With the same assumption, why would someone not want to use Bro. Adams' layout? (four hives grouped together facing different directions and the groups of four look to be spaced such that a truck could be driven between.
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FWIW, I live about 30 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, so cold temps are not much of an issue
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I just saw a presentation Noah Wilson-Rich this weekend on hive direction vs survival. The highest percentage of survival was with west facing hives. Of course, prevailing winds in your location may change that. I think west isn't the best here as winter winds usually come out of the west or northwest. North was the lowest survivability. East and south were about even and not that far from west.
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Interesting. I just googled to see if I could find any background on that. I'd be curious to know how that was studied. I'm assuming these survival rates are averages throughout the world not just in a particular locale.
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Different studies, done at different times and with different bees, have shown different percentages of drifting bees. The most drifting occurred with young bees on their first few orientation flights, especially under windy conditions. I saw this summer much drifting in my home yard because of this.
I have used Br. Adam's 4 colony grouping in my outyards, and it works well, my only problem was with mowing and weed control around and between colonies within the groups. If sufficient work space is left between colonies within the group it makes the working of colonies more enjoyable. Colors and shapes at entrances have never worked for me, only facing entrances in different directions have made a difference. In my beeyards with trees for wind protection the direction the entrance faces makes little or no difference in colony's wellbeing or honey production.
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AR: how do you space your sets of 4?
Yeah, the weed control, I could see being a problem. I lay roll roofing down to mitigate SHB's but it gets kind of worn after a season or two. This may be madness, but I am experimenting by smothering out grass, then laying down large plastic political signs, then the roll roofing. We'll see.
I tried commercial strength weed barrier cloth. It saves some labor (but adds expense) and was not satisfactory because nutgrass pokes through.
We have some truly hellacious weeds here. A good weedeater does the trick but they are high maintenance. The repairman charges $75 an hour and I would rather drive nails in my skull than do mechanical repairs.
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The yards where I used Adam's spacing were on property owned by others so I was limited in what controls I could use. If on my property I would use plastic and gravel, or cement below the stands along with Roundup on the perimeter.
I had space to walk around the stands, but I did not have enough to sit on a workstool while inspecting. My back needs to be pampered anymore, I can't stand very long, or bend over for any length of time. My home yard is setup with concrete pads for rows of pairs, so I live with what drift occurs. I will reduce my numbers next spring and then I plan on facing the colonies that are in pairs in different directions, and having some pads with only one colony.
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"A good weedeater does the trick but they are high maintenance. The repairman charges $75 an hour"
Urbis,
What type of gas are you using in your weedeater. Ethanol gas destroys the rubber valves in the carburetor. Use pure gas and it will last a long time.
Ethanol gas destroys all types of farm machinery.
It is worth the extra 50 cents per gallon to protect your equipment.
Thank your congress man for destroying all those weedeaters.
Jim
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Sawdust is right about ethanol, and especially in 2 cycle engines. My mechanic told me avgas is best for chainsaws, next is non ethanol 91 octane auto gas, this does not destroy carbs and every thing runs better on pure gasoline.
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In the southern hemisphere north and east are the preferred directions with south the worst.
We place our hives in rows where the next row is staggered to allow the hive behind a flight path with all entrances facing the same direction.
I suppose you can work at the side of a hive without being in the direct flight path of another hive.
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How long have you been maintaining your "A Heretics Guide to Beekeeping"?
A couple of years - but there's still precious little information on that site. Full kudos to those who can find the time to keep their webpages up-to-date and interesting.
LJ
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> I'd be curious to know how that was studied. I'm assuming these survival rates are averages throughout the world not just in a particular locale.
The presentation was by Noah Wilson-Rich who is the founder of https://bestbees.com You might ask him. You could address them to bestbees: info@bestbees.com I don't know, but my impression was it was in North America. I'm sure everything south of the equator will be quite different.
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I use gas that has no ethanol in all my small engines. I should use it in my truck as well, but too cheap for that. Y'all don't find weedeaters to be high maintenance?
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A good weedeater does the trick but they are high maintenance.
New weed eater carbs are unaffected by the new gas except for leaving gas in the carb for a long time. Run them dry for long storage.
I have usually around 3 hives so I use a sickle in front of the hive in late evening. I also pull weeds after they flower. Try not to hit the hive or base with the sickle.
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With my cheap weed eaters I use, the fuel line into the tank rots. The carbs may be ok but pulling a new fuel line through is a pain in the rear.
Kevin
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Kwait,
The next time you have to change a gas line, look for a kit that has a pull tool in it. They make it a lot easier.
Jim
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Nevermind
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Thanks for the tip. I?ll check them out.
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I got tired of fighting the engines and got an electric weed whacker. It is plenty to do around the hives and no gas in the car.
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Over on this side of the pond we call the heavy duty jobs 'brush-cutters', and the lighter, domestic variety 'strimmers' - the latter usually being electric. I would never use a strimmer around a beehive, for fear of a mass attack - which has indeed happened to me in the past. They must sound to the bees like The Hornet From Hell. No problem with motor mowers, scythes, sickles etc - it's just that high-pitched 'zizz' sound of the strimmer which upsets my girls.
LJ
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I was concerned about that, but mine isn't high pitched and hasn't caused any issues.
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My wife uses an electric because she can't handle the weight of the gas weed eater. After the first spool got used we couldn't get the second real to eject the string worth a darn so she bought another electric weed eater, same brand. Something was wrong with the spool because now they both work fine. I have never used either gas or electric in front of the hive due to the reports. Weeds are usually too strong to take down anyway with a trimmer because I let them flower. This year I didn't trim them and paid the price with a hive beetle infestation. It won't happen next year because the bill board people built me a road and double wide gate in front of my hives.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/FtoXir36OuVpiHh13
Added photo link
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Lil John, I am surprised to hear your bees get upset. I mow in front of entrance in the spring with a riding mower, or 40 volt trimmer, no problems. During a dearth, I wear protection. My bees are not really bothered by the noise, (gas or electric). Now grass exhaust on hive entrance is asking for trouble. My hives are 12" above ground, so actually I am mowing under the hive, not directly in front of the hive entrance. I am sure this makes a difference, also soft grass, no heavy weeds. As long as I don't vibrate the hive, my bees are usually OK.
Using an electric leaf blower, I inadvertently (the wind picked up) showered a hive entrance with leaf matter. Oh no, I thought. Now that excited the lil bees and they let me know it. However, the bees immediately calmed down after I redirected the leaves away from the hive entrance and I paid more attention to the wind gust. Gotta luv those lil critters, I say.
Blessings
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I have carpet or other material under my stands so I only have to mow vegetation about 2 feet in front of hive stand. I have been using a riding mower and direct the cuttings away from hives. I have always only made one pass and go to another stand, this summer I decided I would make the second round. They were waiting to give me a very memorable reception. I don't need to be honored in such a fashion so from now on one trip per day. It seems more humorous today than it was that day.
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I mow right up to the hives on a riding mower all the time and use a weed eater and the bees don't mind as long as I keep the exhaust gas and grass away from the hives.
I did, one time mow next to my hives when they were on the bee trailer in a pasture. It was a new mower and I did not realize that it threw the grass behind and upwards. As soon as I past the bees the bees they told me there was a problem. I could not bee within 100 feet of the hives with out being attacked. I kept taking 30 minute breaks hoping they would settle down. Eventually I put my suit on, not zipped up, and finished the job.
Jim