Bee 'dance' on front of hive face

[mtbe]

I have 3 hives which I inspected about 6 days ago.

2 days after inspection, I noted on one of my hives that the front hive face was covered with bees, all facing down, each staying in her area, moving up and down the front face ever so slightly.  The face was not entirely covered with bees, they were spaced so you could still see the white of the face.

They were not fanning.

They've been doing this everyday since that inspection. 

Weather has been in upper 70s, mid 80s, very little rain (until this morning with 4" in one hour!!!!).

Any idea what this is?

[JP]

Classic "washboarding".


...JP

[qa33010]

I read and later heard someone call it their 'happy dance'... :-D

[schawee]

washboarding or what we call down here in cajun land  fais do-do :-D...           ....schawee

[SerenaSYH]

lol, you guys made me do some more research. I thought Washboarding? Happy dance? Surely there's got to be more of an explanation...Dug up Michael Bush's explanation on Google, lol! Reason he says is still unknown, but I wanna dig to the matter, lol!

What I would like to know is how often do bees washboard....Once a week, once a month, etc. I want to know what seasons is washboarding more frequently seen. Mtbe, you mentioned that it all started when you did your inspections, so my question posed to those who wrote back did yours do the same so soon with inspections. I'm glad mtbe mentioned his changes in the beeyard, the temps and weather. I think some of this might give hints for me, the random guesser and new-bee, lol! I'm just way inquisitive....

[SerenaSYH]

I am baaack from the Curiosity feeding grounds   :bee: I did more bee-lurking on the forum and discovered the cute video from Wits End and someone mentioning about their bees doing a Happy Dance every evening, whereas some reported very rare Happy dance...I went and looked up every single post I could find by typing in washboarding. What I found seems more than coincidence...

Wits' end post
http://forum.beemaster.com/index.php/topic,33540.0.html

To me both responses and mtbe's experience may give some clues???? To me an evening happy dance and the bee inspections and the human shifting the entryway, to me suggests the possibility that bees are trying to communicate to other members that the hive is still "o.k."; it is like a "roll-call" checkup for the bees, making sure everyone is o.k. and present in spite of the slight shifts and change that has happened to their hive??? Sort of like the way a teacher would call up attendance after a field trip for example....
http://forum.beemaster.com/index.php/topic,33540.0.html

Here are some observations I gleaned about the roll-call theory...

I saw this post here:
http://forum.beemaster.com/index.php/topic,3814.0.html

Again, only when a hive finally got a laying queen did this trigger a specific roll-call. To me this is a summoning after a very special change has occurred. Bees do want to keep attendance to their new queen!

Here again, another washboarding incident:
Notice that these 2 hives are placed close together and were "bought" at the same time. To me their closeness triggered washboarding behavior (roll-call) in the other hive because that other hive was trying to differentiate itself from the other hive...
http://forum.beemaster.com/index.php/topic,16134.0.html