Guide to Moving Bee Hives Short Distances (2024)

If you were a creature that had evolved to make your home almost exclusively in tree cavities, it's not likely you’d have much wanderlust. Except for swarming, a honey bee colony doesn’t adjust easily to changes of address. But, frequently, beekeepers need to relocate their hives. How do beekeepers move their colonies short distances, without causing havoc? There are some required steps involved that help ensure a smoother move. Follow these tips to help your bees acclimate when moving hives shorter distances — and explore a little bee travel trivia, too.

How far do honey bees travel?

Bees may travel up to three miles away from the hive while foraging. Honey bees’ ability to move around successfully within their local foraging range is truly remarkable. Complex sensory and geospatial reference systems allow bees to carry a "map" in their heads of where scouts have discovered the best nectar and pollen resources, and they can find and collect those identified resources and get back to their own colony with their treasure.

Bees can easily fly out from their hive and return to their own front door, even in a field crowded with hundreds of hives. And when they are taken to a distant location, the foragers can readily create a fresh mental “map” that includes new resources and the hive’s new position. But, a honey bee's directional ability is not perfect under all conditions, which is why we have the beekeepers’ adage that you can successfully “move a hive three feet, or three miles away,” but not a distance in between.

The reason for this is that, before a forager first leaves the area close to the hive, she spends time "orienting" to the location by flying in ever-enlarging circles. After the first few treks, a forager may not do that every time she leaves the hive because she isn't really expecting any changes. However, if the hive has been recently moved, the returning bee may not know that she started out from a new location and could wind up back at the old location, instead.

Traveling bees to promote pollination

Honey bees are important livestock for humans: Every February, more than three-quarters of all the managed bee colonies in the U.S. are trucked to California to work as almond pollinators for a few weeks. As soon as that gig is over, most of these hives are hauled thousands of miles before they can settle down at yet another new place.

How do you help bees adjust to a short-distance move?

To reduce the risk of population losses that can come with moving hives over short distances, the traditional recommendation is to take the bees to a temporary location at least three miles away so that they are in a completely unfamiliar environment. After several weeks, once oriented foragers have died of old age, bring the hive back to wherever you wanted to move them to in the first place.

But, what if you don’t want to, or can’t, move the bees three miles away? You have two options:

If you’re moving the hive between 5 to 35 feet, and you have the patience for it, you can simply shift the hive a few feet every few days until the distance is covered. This allows you to slow down, or even slightly reverse the move, if you see a lot of bees hovering around the previous location for an extended period.
On the other hand, if you want to do the move all in one go, you need a more sophisticated plan: You can move your hive to its intended location, then "force" a re-orientation — as well as have a plan to deal with the inevitable bees who don’t get with the program right away.

Hive before the move with triangle escape in place.

Is it safe to move bee hives?

Yes, with some common sense precautions, moving hives can be done safely with no harm to the colony or the people involved. For this second option, consider these important factors:

What time of year is best for moving a hive?

The best time of year to move a hive is mid-to-late spring and onward; when it's warm enough that if the bees' cluster is jostled apart during the move, it could easily reform before becoming too chilled. If you can move your hive before the main flow requires adding supers, it will be less work.

Do you need special equipment to move bee hives?

After these steps have been taken, the hive is carried, or wheeled, to its new location, with no special equipment required: You can strap a hive to a dolly or handcart; lift it onto a trailer, use a hive-lifting device, or recruit a handful of strong friends to simply lift the hive up and carry it to the new place. You can even use the bucket of a tractor — just be sure your bucket can lift the hive high enough to avoid banging into uneven ground or gullies, use a low or creeper gear to minimize jolts and swings, and have a helper walk beside you to steady the hive and keep it from swinging or twisting.

What to do after the hive is in its new location

Moved hive with thick layer of branches covering the entrance to force reorientation.

When you reach the new site, place the hive so the front entrance faces 180 degrees away from the direction it was at the old location — even if you plan to turn it around later. If you can, place the hive to radically change the landmarks near the hive. For instance, if the hive was out in an open field before, place it (temporarily) near the base of a tree or beside a fence or building. The more different the two locations appear, the better. After the initial rumpus of the big move has settled down, you can make smaller moves to place the hive in your preferred location.

How to re-orient bees after a move

Before you reopen the hive, surround the front entrance area with a tangle of leafy or evergreen branches. This gives the exiting bees no choice but to negotiate their way through a thicket. You don’t want to “smother” the entrance, but it should be a dense jungle of branches so the bees can't fly out freely. Perhaps even add some solid barriers to the sides — plastic lawn signs are very useful for this, as are shipping pallets with vines and branches woven among the slats.

Have the re-orientation prompts at hand before the move so you can set them up immediately after the hive is in its new location. Once the prompts are set up, the hive entrance can be re-opened. If you make the move at night, get up before dawn to re-open the hive. But if you’ve moved the hive at first light, get it open as soon as possible to avoid panicky bees and overheating.

The tangle of branches, the new compass orientation, and changes in visible landmarks will cause the bees to re-orient when they first leave the hive, before flying off to forage or scout the area. You can expect normal activity levels near the hive in a surprisingly short time, but leave all the branches and blocks in place for at least several days, or up to a week.

Left-behind box set up collect bees at the old site. Hive after the move with left-behind box placed on top.

What if bees are left behind after the hive is moved?

After a short-distance move, you may find some foragers are returning to the old location looking for their hive. In a well-planned move, they will have the time and warm enough temperatures to fly in widening circles until they pick up the scent of their hive and fly toward the new location. As long as the bees have nectar in their crops and are not being chilled, most will find their own way from the old location to the new one. But, if you don’t want to lose any foragers, you’ll need a way to collect and transport the late-day stragglers to the new location — and this is where a left-behind box comes in handy.

Using a left-behind box to capture stragglers

The left-behind box comes from beekeeping writer and lecturer, Michael Bush, who first promoted the notion of capturing stragglers in a spare box with drawn frames after moving your hive, then carrying that box to the new location. This allows bees access to the newly-moved hive on their own.

A box with drawn frames inside is made available exactly at the old hive location, facing the same direction, late in the day — when the chances of lost foragers finding their way to the new location begin to fade. Any lost bees will enter it and settle down for the night. If placed earlier, confused foragers may huddle in the box, rather than continuing to hunt for their home’s new location. After dark, the box — with the bees inside — is closed and carried to the new location and put in place, returning the bees to their home. The process can be repeated for two or three nights, as necessary, to capture any stragglers at the old hive location.

The left-behind box method imitates a natural bee-controlled move: swarming. When swarming, the new hive location is often well within a three-mile radius, and once at their new home, foragers re-orient themselves to the new location but continue foraging within familiar territory. Any foragers who got confused and accidentally returned to the parent hive’s location after a swarm would likely be able to rejoin that colony — in this case, replaced by the left-behind box.

Quick Tip: If you plan to move multiple hives, move the strongest one(s) first: Some of the confused foragers that return to the old site will drift their way into weaker colonies, strengthening them over the following days.

Reorientation prompts and a left-behind box allow beekeepers to avoid a population loss, as well as collect and reunite any confused late-day foragers with their colony, at the new location. Consider these factors when moving your hives short distances for the best results — and explore our Beekeeping Guide for more tips for beekeepers.