How do you get the bees not to fly away when theyre on the truck?
Basically we wait until its dark before we travel. That allows for the field bees whove been foraging throughout the day to come home to the hive as night falls. Bees have an amazingly strong homing device theyll always come back to their particular hive, not even the one right next to it, only inches away. If you move the hive they get confused and flustered for a while until they find where youve moved it to. But once theyve settled into the hives at night, they wont come out again, so thats when we pick them up and load them on the truck. Sometimes if we do it before theyre all back and inside , well get huge beards of bees clinging to the outside of the hive boxes and even the truck itself.
