Do you keep many stingless bee colonies in neat, identical rows? That neatness may be making your bees go to the wrong home.
What is drifting?
Drifting happens when foragers return and enter a neighboring colony by mistake. It sounds harmless, but it spreads pathogens, parasites and pesticide residues between colonies and drains workers from weaker colonies.
The new findings
PhD candidate Ana Paula Cipriano (University of Bristol, UK) and researcher Cristiano Menezes (Embrapa, Brazil) fitted tiny RFID tags to individual bees of two stingless species, Scaptotrigona depilis and Melipona quadrifasciata, to track their return (reported September 2026):
Identical boxes, entrances facing the same way: about 60.5% of bees drifted.
Alternating entrance directions: reduced to 48%.
Differently colored boxes (same direction): reduced to about 38%.
Preliminary results also suggest that bees exposed to imidacloprid combined with glyphosate made flights at least 34% shorter and were more prone to orientation errors.
4 things farm owners can do right away
Paint or mark neighboring boxes in different colors (yellow, blue, white… colors bees see well).
Alternate entrance directions between adjacent hives.
Increase spacing and add landmarks (plants, posts, stones) in dense meliponaries.
Keep apiaries away from sprayed fields; choose areas with planned, clean forage.
These measures cost almost nothing yet keep colonies healthier and limit disease spread – especially important for high-density farms.
Reference: Cipriano A.P., Menezes C. et al. (2026); FreshFruitPortal, 11 September 2026.