Hi,
Usually, I have fairly even bee activity between the two hives I have (see pic form Tuesday 4/8).
Yesterday (Thursday, 4/10), I had almost no outside activity on one of the hives, and excessive (as far as I can tell) activity on the other.
Reason for a worry?
Regards,
George
PS.
Site not letting me post pics right now, but will post them a bit later when photo sharing is back online.
(http://s16.postimg.org/5om5tq0ap/2014_04_08_12_05_15_n.jpg) (http://postimg.org/image/5om5tq0ap/)
(http://s16.postimg.org/cgckwkpa9/2014_04_10_19_01_47_n.jpg) (http://postimg.org/image/cgckwkpa9/)
Added 2 pics from 4/8 (usual/normal activity between hives), and "abnormal" from 4/10 (one hive busy, the one one not so).
The one with the abnormal activity...did it look like they were fighting??? You may have some robbing going on?? Not sure.
I would be going in to see what was happening.
As Iddee said I would want to know what's happening but my first thought is one was orienting and the other was not.
I still get alarmed at times when you get a good orientation flight. You look at your hives and figure there must be robbing with as many bees that are coming and going. But when you look close it's all orderly, there's fanning, bees are coming with pollen, and everybody is getting along.
I have 9 hives in very close proximity to each other - right next to each other - and some times I worry about 1 or more hives as the 'traffic' is very slow then 5 - 10 mins later those hives are buzzing like the others. Could just be a lull in traffic as the field bees are all out and there is no orientation planned for that time... just a thought. But I must admit that my 2 queenless hives (Am giving brood and eggs in hopes that they fix the problem themselves soon enough) do have less 'traffic' more often.
To my ability, I did not recognize any fighting (I did witness a bee last year fighting a wasp/yellow jacket while I was feeding in late summer).
High traffic did not look like fighting. It looked at lot more like "bearding", but last summer, usually both hives bearded when they did, so it looked surprising that only one did this time.
Moreover, the non-traffic hive, has only one bottom entrance with solid bottom and non-ventilated inner cover, while the high traffic one, has two entrances (bottom and top) with a screened bottom board and ventilated inner cover, so if I was to see any bearding behavior, I was expecting to see it on the non-traffic hive -- yet the bees surprised me yet again.
Git in 're!!! Beautiful day for an inspection! FINALLY! :)
I have 2 Langs hives (2 deep broodbox on both) on the same stand with a TBH (empty) between them. My "blue" hive is very active early in the morning. The "pink" takes a little longer to get really rolling but it seems to work longer after sundown. Been like that everyday for quite awhile. Guess they didn't set their clocks forward.
The "blue" hive does get some sun a few minutes before the "pink" hive but they are active even before the sun hits them. There are more bees in "blue" and that may be the reason.
this does not happen much
the other day all three hives having their orienting flights at the same time
call it beautiful wonderful
I found it a bit scary (what would the neighbors say)?
jay
My hives tend to look like this after an inspection:
(http://i1315.photobucket.com/albums/t596/Tracy_Spear/Photo0054_zps6e2f2144.jpg) (http://s1315.photobucket.com/user/Tracy_Spear/media/Photo0054_zps6e2f2144.jpg.html)