Has anyone seen this? I installed 3 packages of bees a month ago and after a couple days when it warmed up I noticed quite a number of bees that would fly out of the hive, land on the ground and then climb up an individual blade of Kan-tuck-ee bluegrass and just perch at the top. Sometimes they would stay for quite awhile and then take off again.
I didn't think much of it and chalked it up to orientation but today my buddy noticed the same behavior in a package he had just hived. Orientation you think? Sick bees maybe? Didn't seem like they stayed on the ground as though they were on their last legs.
I searched the forum a bit and didn't come across anything similar and my copy of Huber is in the shop.
I am stumped. I'll be checking back to see what the answer is.
Maybe it's cold so they need to perch on the grass to warm up a bit away from the ground?
That could be. It was snowing when I hived them and warmed up a couple days later.
It's a mystery. I guess that if we knew what they were doing all the time it wouldn't be as much fun.
Is it possible they are collecting water? I sometimes spray the grass in front of the hives and bees will collect water off the grass.