Over a foot of rain over the last three days and we finally get a 1 hour "dry" spell around 3:30 pm today which coincides with normal orientation flight time and all 3 of my backyard hives boiled out at the same time . .....20 minutes of insanity and then it started to get dark and rain again and there was a traffic jam on the landing boards to get back inside... The video I tried to take didn't turn out but it rivaled any swarm video I have ever watched LOL.
Every day is something new...
Sounds like 3 days of missed orientation flights all at once.
When they come out like that, look at the bees and which way they are flying as they come out. Are they coming out and flying away from the hive or are they flying in circles looking at the hive.
Sometimes when a queen makes her maiden flight it looks like the bees are swarming but they are just saturating the area with bees to protect her from pretitors waiting to catch a big slow queen.
Jim
It was a mixture of both cleansing and orientation...finally had sun today and was in the hives and everything looks normal and saw all three queens and eggs so it wasn't a maiden flight or anything. The weather has been horrendous the past three days with that front stalled out over us down here in the Keys....temps in the mid 70's but almost constant rain with interspersed deluges so very little flight at all.. Total for 3 days as of this morning was 12.65 inches......