🐝 Colony Recovery After Transport

About this simulation

Moving a hive resets a colony's spatial memory. Foragers that once flew straight to familiar flowers must re-learn the location of their own entrance, and the colony spends the first two days rebuilding routines that transport disrupted — all while being unusually vulnerable to robbing from stronger neighboring colonies.

How it works

• Orientation flights — small looping "figure-of-eight" flights bees make in front of a new entrance to relearn its position. They are intense in the first hours and fade as memory forms.
• Forager traffic — steady in-and-out flight to the field. It is suppressed right after a move and rebuilds over the first day or two.
• Brood coverage — the fraction of comb showing fresh eggs and larvae. It only grows if the queen survived the move and resumes laying; a missing or injured queen leaves it flat and patchy.
• Robbing risk — a wide-open entrance, a weakened or confused colony, and strong colonies nearby combine into a real chance of a robbing outbreak, visualized as red-tinted bees fighting at the entrance.

Controls

• Hours since transport — scrub through the first 48 hours after the move.
• Entrance opening — how wide the entrance reducer is set; narrow openings are easier for guard bees to defend.
• Robbing pressure nearby — how much competition for nectar exists from strong colonies in the area.
• Queen status — whether the queen is confirmed alive and laying, or missing/not yet laying after the move.

Did you know?

Beekeepers often reduce a hive's entrance to its narrowest defensible width for the first day or two after a move — a small colony with a large entrance simply cannot post enough guards to stop a determined robbing attempt.