I came home this afternoon around 1:30 and noticed a tremendous amount of bees around one of 8 hives. Thousands of bees on the front bottom box and bearding on the landing board. The air in front was full of bees coming and going and when I looked up the sky was full of bees heading strait up until they disappeared. I actually couldn't believe I had that many bees in that hive. Made up of four 8 frame mediums. In about 2 minutes things were as if it never happened. It's now 3 hours later and other than a few hundred bees on the outside of the box things appear normal. All the other hives seemed normal while this was happening. I have 20+ hives and have never seen this many bees in the air at one time. Sunny and 88 degrees in the sun.
What do you folks with more experience think?
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Were you out in the yard for the 3 hours? If it was a mating escort, you would have seen them return in that time frame.
When a hive swarms, I put my ear to the hive several times over the next few days to listen for queens piping. If I hear them, they are probably going to super swarm, my term for they will swarm multiple times. I take the hive apart slowly and catch or open the remaining queens/cells. Do it slowly removing one frame at a time, trying not to disturb the bees. Once you disturb the bees, they stop keeping the queens locked in their cells and the queens emerge in mass. I mark and cage all of the queens and when I am done, I put one back in the hive.
Jim
I was around the yard all afternoon but did not see a rerun of the mass of bees. I did open the hive and take a peak and it's still full of bees. I also noticed several hundred bees under the SBB. They have also started to pull some comb under there. Hmmm. I have had several large balls of bees get under the SBB this year but this is the first comb I have seen.