Yesterday I had one of my stronger hives all boil out of the hive at around 7:30 AM and I thought surely it was a swarm that I had somehow missed seeing the signs for....activity outbound reminded me of the swarms I have seen but once the bees were out they acted like a normal orientation flight big loops and a lot of inbound traffic as well as the bees pouring out....10 minutes later everything was back to normal.....just odd to see it in the AM as opposed to 4-6 PM like normal.....anyways they did it again this morning.
Is this normal? having bees radically alter their orientation times like this?
What was your weather situation like yesterday ? Most of mine came boiling out early this morning - but that's undoubtedly because of the storms we've had during the last few days (typical British summer weather ...) during which they've been 'confined to barracks' - so now they're making-up for lost time.
LJ
hot and dry....no reason for them not to orient yesterday afternoon....will see if the pattern continues its just startling to be sitting here drinking coffee staring out the back window and watch a hive explode....thats 2 mornings in a row I scrambled for my swarm gear LOL.
Could they be practice swarming? Maybe they queen wasn't ready to go yet. I don't know. Just a guess.
Dunno....they didn't do it today....go figure.
And for the record this is a swarm I caught in early February....they have really boomed but they have space and i didn't see any queen cells when I was in it last week.
Ok I was mistaken...the girls slept in this morning....orientation flights going on now.....about an hour later than the last two days....stranger and stranger.
My two hives do it twice a day - around 10am and 3-4pm.
I see this now that it is 112 or soon in the afternoons... Perhaps due to heat? Not sure since new at this, but looks like orientation flying to me and all 3 hives do it to some extent.
FWIW, I get 2 flights per day. I've noticed that coming into this time of year the morning orientation flights of my hives are bigger and the PM flights are smaller. It's also this time of year that we start getting PM thunderstorms.
You have a tropical system forming NW of the keys, forecast to move NE. Could they be feeling a change in barometer?
I am going to assume they were practice swarms....cause they swarmed this morning :tongue:
Snagged em out of a tree in the neighbors yard and boxed em up but now my curiosity is up and I need to go into the mother hive and see where the hell the cells are cause I was in there last week and didn't see any. I guess they could have started some since but surely not enough time to cap em unless I missed some in corners or on bottoms.
I remember going into a hive a couple of years ago. I went through it good - no swarm cells. Seven days later to the day it swarmed.