Bees congregating outside of the hive!?

[strobee]

Hello everyone,

Over the last few days, more and more bees have bee congregating outside of the "original" hive and staying there all night long.  Last night they covered almost the entire front of the hive in clusters, the outside temp was only in the 50s.  What does this mean?  Are they getting ready to abscond or swarm with no queen or a new queen?  How can I prevent this from happening?  If I open the hive what should I look for? Thanks for your help.

-Andreas

Background:
Very new to beekeeping, acquired my swarm beginning of October last year.  Winter was very warm so the colony grew very rapidly.  My hive is a 8 frame langstroth with 3 medium broom chambers/supers.  on the 7th of this month opened the hive for the first time this season and found approx. 10 swarm cells.  So boldly or very stupidly I move two of them along with some bees, brood and stores into a nuc box, placed that box beside the original hive.  Created another nuc containing the old queen, brood, bees and stores, but no swarm cells and moved that nuc to a new location inside of my yard.  Left the remainder of the queen cells inside the original hive.  I've been feeding both nucs but only added blank frames to the original hive since they had plenty of stores.

[iddee]

Sounds like the perfect report to me. I would check the original hive and be sure they still have empty space. It sounds like they may have filled up everything  and need another box.

[Vance G]

If it were me, I would look for swarm cells and split if they are in the process of doing it themselves.  I would put another box of whatever size you use on.  If you plan on multiple brood boxes, I would put the next preferably foundation on the bottom.  That way the surplus bees will have room to cluster and will quickly draw comb.

[strobee]

Thanks for the replies.  I'm not sure how to determine if they have enough room.  It seems like they do when I look inside the hive.  If I add another box too soon, will that give me issues?  When I stole frames from the hive to make the  new nucs I replaced them with undrawn frames, but instead of placing them on the bottom I placed them on top.  Could that give the bees a false sense of being overcrowded?

[Poppi]

add a super and give them room to expand.    Bee's are bee's and bee's do what bee's do...  I would also suggest looking for swarm cells....,  but chances are it is a early warm spring and things are not what we expect...  I think the general rule for "enough room"   is in a 10 frame langstroth, if 7 or 8 of the frames are drawn...   it's time to add some room..  my hives are doing the same thing but it's almost 90 degrees so it's summer for them and they are "bearding" on the outside...  I will put on my screened inner cover and see if that helps...   The thing to watch for is a sudden freeze and it can happen....   I would think that this unusual weather would tell us to be a little more diligent until the weather settles...    just mho   John

[strobee]

Thanks for all of your help.  I will be adding a super in the next few days...I hope they don't mind having to wait on me.

-Andreas

[Sparky]

Sometimes if the weather turns warm like it has been and you have a population boom of young bees and the hive needs some cooling the entrance opening could be to small to fan the air. Some of the older bees you moved on the frames to the splits may have returned to their old home from not being far enough away to keep them from returning.

[beewitch]

Thanks for the info, as I, too, am having this issue.  My most active colony has been bearding for 4 days now.  I've checked for queen cells, added a super and checkerboarded and they are still doing it.  So I'm hoping it's just "cooling" behavior and not ready-set-swarm!

[Michael Bush]

http://www.bushfarms.com/beesfaqs.htm#bearding