If I have to move the hive 1 metre and also change the entrance orientation 180deg, would I need to put grass/branches to force the bees to reorient to the new entrance direction?
Personally, I don’t think the branches thing works, bees take their orientation cues from landmarks, once they leave the entrance and the branches they will see the same landmarks e.g. buildings, trees, hills, etc and return to the old hive position. I turn my hives 30 degrees at a time and have turned a couple of times in a day (morning and afternoon) with good results.
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! agree with @Rodderick a metre move is no issue, you can do that in one move and I would agree that 30 degree of turn each 24 hours won’t cause an issue. so there will be no need for the bees to re-orientate. They might take a moment to figure out where the entrance is but they will find it.
Cheers
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@Rodderick @Peter48 thank you.
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@Peter48 : I started my first ever hive last Saturday and realise the entrance was in the wrong direction so i was told turn it around (180degree) on Sunday. I noticed lots of bees were on the back and underneath the hive yesterday and this morning. I found this post and hope to get some advise on what else I can do to help the bees find the entrance. Will the bees die if they can’t get inside the hive after days.
Thank you
Sara
The bees use what they see about the hive and figure that is where the entrance should be. I would put the hive back into the same entrance position, leave it there for a day then rotate the hive by no more than 30 degree each day till the entrance is somewhere in the N/E to North direction. Whoever told you to turn it 180 degrees in one go is a goose and given you very basic wrong information!!!
The bees won’t die if they can’t get back into the hive unless it rains and they get cold as well. But they are confused and not able to bring pollen and nectar back into the hive to contribute to the colony.
Hope that answers your question. Welcome to the forum, enjoy your bee keeping journey and good on you for asking your question.
Cheers
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Hi Sara.
Dont want to disagree with @Peter48 as he knows his stuff but I did turned my hive entrance around 180degs as I didnt have the space where my hive was to do it slowly (which would be the preferred way). It did take about 1.5 weeks before the bees were using the entrance in the new direction. The first few days, the bees were landing on the back of the hive then eventually walked around to the front. As the days went by, there were less and less bees doing that. In 3 weeks, all the old foragers will have died and the new ones each day will reorient to the entrance in the new direction. If you observe the hive, you should notice some of the bees are doing the nasonov fanning thing to help guide those bees to the front.
If you are truly worried, which i was on day 1 
i got a sheet of stiff paper and was slowly scopping up the bees and shaking them at the entrance.
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Not sure your disagreeing with me Eric, as you say the bees will fly to the entrance position they know, as I said. Where there is an option of turning the hive as I described it is a better option but understand you couldn’t do it.
Cheers
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Thank you @Peter48 and @Ericm
I feel a bit better. Unfortunately the hive is sitting on the base that I cannot turn it less than 180 degree. I will keep an eye on the hive and do my best to help them.
@Ericm i spent most morning gently scooped few bees onto thin cardboard and moved them to the entrance.
That made me feel better for sure 
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Put up a sign. But don’t use colour red as they are blind to that spectrum of colour.
Arrows and symbols are better as not all European bees can read English.
Welcome to the forum.
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Some of my bees see red quite often at the moment 
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