Guilfordbeekeepers.org

A question for the group:

Yesterday I set up 7 hives each with its own package of bees and a queen. Each hive has a deep super (first part of my brood chamber) and a top feeder (with a 1:1 ratio of sugar-water).

One hive seems to have more bees on/in it than the rest. The bees are actually bearding on the front and under the hive. The other 6 seem okay, but a lot less bees than the first hive. Should I be concerned, and if so is there anything I should do? My guess is that that hive has the least wind, it is the furtherest to the NE of my cluster, and the wind here blows NE to SW and Thursday and Friday were a bit on the windy side (even with my windbreak in place).

My thoughts are I will wait a week (when I go to check if the queens have freed them selves) and see if the bees have figured out their nesting issues. I figure they need a week to get used to their new environment and I don’t want to mess with them too much in the first week.

Any advice would be great.

When you check them in a week, notice how many frames are covered with bees when you first lift the lid. If one has a lot fewer bees between the frames, exchange places with it and the one with most bees in it. The foragers will return to the weaker hive, thus equalizing them both.

What has happened is called drifting. More bees went to the hive whose queen had the strongest pheremones, since none of the queens were actually their queen. In a week, they will know their queen's smell, and will not drift as much.

PS. Welcome to the forum.

Thank you,

When I noticed the problem (Friday, the day after we put in the bees) I though it maybe something like that. I took 2 frames out of the really busy hive and replaced them with on from from hives that seemed weak.

I did not mess with them today, but it did seem that the hive A-1's (the busy one) activity seemed closer to the rest of the other hives.

Thanks again for your information on this.

Drifting yes.
What color are the hives painted and how are they arranged? Straight row??