Drift

This row of hives in one of my yards it is a typical line for drift. I have eight hives in a line. In this case the last hive has three supers and is the strongest colony

When ever hives are in a straight row there is drift of the bees.

The bees tend to move to the outside hives. The hives in the center get weaker the outside colonies get stronger.

When hives in lines get like this the simple fix is to move weak colonies to the outside and strong colonies to the middle. This will even out the populations.

One way to manage this is to not put hives in long straight lines.

Offset the colonies to break up the line.