In this instructional video, the beekeeper explains the widely‑known 3‑foot/3‑mile rule that limits how far a hive can be moved during the active season because foraging bees rely on visual landmarks and flight to locate their home. He then describes why this rule does not apply in cold winter conditions when the colony is overwintering and the bees are not flying. During a cool snap (around 3‑4 °C with frost), the beekeeper demonstrates picking up a full hive and relocating it anywhere within the apiary, emphasizing that the bees will re‑orient themselves in spring after a prolonged period of inactivity. The video stresses using extended cold periods to re‑configure an apiary, explains bee navigation and memory, and provides practical guidance for safe winter hive moves.
Chapters
If you wanna move your beehive, winter is the time to do it. Normally with beehives, you cannot move them great distances because all the bees remember where the beehive is. They fly out, they fly back in, they know this position here, and they do recognize the shape of the beehive as well. In the season, this is the rule that applies. You can pick up any beehive like this and you can move it 3 feet in any direction. So you can go 3 feet forwards, you can go 3 feet back like that, or you can go 3 feet over to the left, or you can go 3 feet over from the right. So it can move off in any position like that. But the 3 feet rule doesn't really give me a huge amount of flexibility when it comes to moving this beehive here. And the rule states this: if you move the beehive anything more than 3 feet, you have to jump to 3 miles. Now the reason that you have to do that is because of the flying bees. The bees fly out, they fly back in, they've triangulated to everything in the vicinity, and they know how to find their way back to this spot here. If these bees were flying and I just picked them up like this and kind of moved them over here and maybe stacked them down next to my pizza oven up here, Then what would happen is, if we come back over here, all of the bees would still be doing the same. They'd be going out and flying and triangulating back in, and they'd come back down to this spot here and they would say, well, the beehive's gone. That is how the 3-foot and 3-mile rule works. It is completely reliant on the bees flying, going out, triangulating, recognizing where they are, and finding their way back home. But winter, especially if it's a nice cool winter, gives you this brilliant opportunity just to be able to pick the beehive up, as long as the bees are not flying, and just go and take it absolutely anywhere at all. So let's do that today. As long as you're getting really nice cool weather, it's about 3 or 4 degrees here at the moment, we're getting nice sharp overnight frosts and the forecast doesn't look very good for the next few weeks, then you can just pick up Any hive of any size like this, and you can go and place it anywhere that you want. The 3-foot or the 3-mile rule does not apply if the weather is nice and cool like it is at the moment. And all I'm going to do with this beehive here is go and place it into a brand new position into the apiary on top of this empty beehive here. So that might have looked like I was just carrying an empty box around the apiary, but coming closer here, you will see there is a full colony of bees in here, a very active colony of bees. full of stores, really nice, happy, friendly, calm colony of bees getting ready to overwinter. Now these bees here, they're gonna stay inside because it's very, very cold. They're not gonna go out, they're not gonna triangulate, they're not gonna go back to this spot. The next time they're gonna come out of this beehive here will be later on in the spring. And the way that bees' memory works is that if there's a long gap in between going out and flying, they have to retriangulate again. So they're gonna go and fly out there and find some new trees and work out that this here is their new home. Not that little spot over there 20 meters away. The 3-foot or 3-mile rule does not apply if you're in an extended cold snap. Use it to your advantage and reconfigure your apiary as you desire.
