OK - So we didn't really get too far in moving the bees. - They'd gone about 10 feet from their original home, but were now in the way, and we still had about 40 feet to go. I looked around the internet for other options for short distance moves, and anyway, this is what we did... The basic thing seems to be to try to force the bees to reorient themselves. There seem to be two ways of doing this, either confine them for some time, or change the environment immediately outside the hive radically. - We tried a combination approach.
1. - Day one. Block the hive in the evening. Move the hive to it's new location at the same time and leave it blocked.
2. - After 72 hours, open the entrance and we left a leafy plant in front of the entrance so that emerging bees might be forced further to reorient.
After a couple of hours, there were bees bringing pollen back to the hive in it's new location. True, there are a number of bees around the old location of the hive, and some of them are clearly confused foragers, but I guess we expected we might lose a few. By the evening, there were no bees in the old location so they'd either clustered somewhere, or found the new location. Either way, I think we tentatively judge this a success for now - watch this space.
