Many of the rules of thumb come from experience, "less than three feet
or more than three miles" is a good rule if you want to keep all your
bees.

Except that I deliberately moved a pile of boxes with a cast I didn't want
and can't deal with six feet away from the original site.

They were confused for a few hours then homed into the new site.

I hate to say this but I'm hoping that they'll die ...

Beekeeping is moving on all the time. Open mesh floors are almost
standard in our area now, throughout the winter, though I'm hedging my
bets by keeping a colony on each....

I used them for the last ten years of my time to the scorn of my fellow
Yorkshire beekeepers. I never lost a colony. It's a good system.

Mary