What were my bees doing ?

[Old Blue]

I had the first afternoon available in a while to go take a quick look at my hive yesterday.  I didn't suit up, I just stood off about 30 feet or so and watched a lilttle bit.  The traffic level was lower than what I was expecting since the last time I opened them up about 4 weeks ago, there was a lot of capped brood. 

The wind was a liittle stronger than usual and the area is out in the open.  After about 5 minutes I noticed a couple of hundred bees flying in a particular area next to a bush about 20 feet away from the hive.  Their flight was not a lazy friendly looking type of flight.  It looked like high speed circling and making passes through the area.  As I watched, more and more bees joined them, and in the breeze this expanding flight of what I took to be agitated bees, would occasionally veer towards me.  I backed off to about 75 feet or so up the slope that I have them located on and continued to watch.  As I watched more and more bees joined in and there was an impressive and worrisome number of bees in the air flying around at high speed.  I got worried about their behavior and high tailed it out of there and didn't stick around to see what would happen.

Does anybody have any ideas why they were doing this? 

I don't think they were swarming since the last time I had them open there was a full deep that was only maybe 10-20% built out with plenty of room in the hive and not very much honey.  I used to have this hive on the top of my house and saw lots of days of orientation flights and this was definately not the case.  I had been holding my dog before going over there and I wondered if the smell would have started this but dismissed the thought because they weren't coming around me, but it definitely all happened while I was there watching.  The guy whose house I have them at tells me he occasionally stands about 10 feet or so from them and watches them and some times feels like he needs to move back another 5 - 10 feet or so.

What are they up to?

Any ideas?
:?
Old Blue

[Two Bees]

That's a real puzzler!  Have never witnessed that before.

Since the numbers were increasing, it sounds like they may have been a collecting swarm with perhaps a queen that had returned to the hive?

Don't think these were orientation flights.  These flights generally occur near the hive since it's the hive that they are orienting towards.

Could they have found a quick source of propolis and were hurrying to collect it all?

Perhaps someone else can help and surprise us all!   :shock:

[JP]

Sounds like swarming. I wish you would have stayed to complete the missing pieces to this puzzle.

You most likely need to go back in soon & check for bees and swarm cells. They may have swarmed out on you.


...JP

[Kathyp]

could you tell if they were drones?  how many to you guess is "impressive"?  a few hundred, or a few thousand?