Turning your hive

After some advice or tips.

The FlowHive2 I introduced at work is doing good but the positioning of the hive is bothering me for cooler weather and winter.

We had a couple of days of really heavy winds and monitoring the hive the wind is driving right into the front entrance. This will cause problems and stress to the bees.

I’m thinking of turning the hive 180° so the front faces the opposite way.

Is this just a simple case of turning the hive or a bit more thinking needed like moving a hive?

I’m assuming it’s just a simple turnaround and the bees will figure it out. Or woukd reducing the entrance be enough?

Winters in the UK can be wild and wet.

Thanks in advance

Dean

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I think when this question has been asked in the past, the consensus was that a turn of no more than 30 degrees every couple of days works best. If you absolutely have to do it in one go, the bees will work it out, but if you don’t want to stress them, slower is better. :wink:

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Thanks Dawn, no rush, so I can do the turns in part on inspection days. I’d rather take the time so as not to stress them out too much as they are busy working the flow frames and would love to be able to harvest 1 frame this season to demonstrate to all at work and the nursery infants how special honey harvesting with a Flow Hive is but from our actual site FlowHive.

Hopefully convert some of the traditional beekeepers within our employee community at the same time.

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As Dawn says 30 degrees rotation at a time every couple of days is best and the bees won’t notice the subtle change.
In your climate, even in your Summer, the colony will benefit from a reduced entrance reducing the cold air draft onto the brood area and the hive being more defendable by less guard bees. Less guard bees needed means more bees can forage and so help to build up the colony.
In my opinion a full width entrance is a bad design fault, in most climates bee will do much better with a smaller entrance, mine are reduced to 50% or less in my sub-tropical climate.
Cheers Dean

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