Re-Orientation of the wayward bees

As dusk neared last night it looked like there would be around 500-1000 bees hanging out in the location of their original hive.  They thought this was still their home.

Bees will exit their hive and immediately go looking for nectar / pollen without first checking and looking around where they started from.  That is unless you place something in the path of the door that alerts them to the fact that something is different.  In my case I put a palm branch.   Yesterday in the pouring rain some bees got through without re-orientating to the new location.

The solution came to me in a brilliant brainstorm.  I built a one way trap out of a few parts I had laying around in my garage.  I used the bottom of the swarm trap vacuum that I built and strapped an inner hive cover with a one way entrance to that.  Inside all of that I placed a little lemon grass oil to make them mellow during the night.  And sure enough it worked like a champ.  As darkness approached, all the bees marched into the temporary home I made for them.  And they couldn't get out.

Sorry for the fuzzy picture - a screen was between hive and camera

This morning as it was getting light I grabbed the trap and moved it back to the new hive location and opened up the box.  At this point I've done all I can do and if they return to the original location they'll just have to figure it out on their own.  And that did happen.  I think many of them figured it out but there were a bunch of lost bees once again out front.  I was going to say something about girls and navigation / getting lost etc.  but I know I'd be getting in trouble from someone in mentioning that it's a pretty common trait for the fairer sex.   I'd be willing to bet there's probably no lost Drones in that group of lost Honey Bees out front.