a whole lot of action today

[neal/cheryl]

This is my first year of bee keeping.
I got a 5 frame nuc in early may.
So far every thing looks good and the bees are very gentile
I was working in the back lawn today and the hive looked as it normaly dose
bees comming and going.
Around a hour later bees were boiling out of the hive entrance and there was a loud buzzing comming from the inside of the hive
The bees would buzz around the front of the hive for a couple min. and then try to reenter but bees were still comming out so they had to wait.
This went on for around a hour
Then slowly all the bees went back into the hive
Dose anyone know what they were doing
Thanks
Neal

[alpha6]

Fire drills...

[GRIMBEE]

I had the same thing happen with all 3 of my hives today, I was sitting watching them then they all boiled out of their hives and were in the air comming and going but mostly flying right around the hives in very large numbers.
And about 45 minutes later all the action died down to normal hive come and go. No swarms thou I inspected all the hives after this unusual activity and all was normal.
I was sitting in my lawn chair watching them when this happened and it was cool bees were everywhere up to 100 feet in the air when I looked up.

[tileguy]

This had happened a couple times with my hives, I think the young hatched and it was their orientation flights..... Sure was cool to see...
T.G.

[Erik T]

Yep, young bees going out on orientation flight. No fear.

[indypartridge]

Yep, young bees going out on orientation flight. No fear.

You'll see it happening nearly the same time each day. For me, it's late afternoon, but never at the same time for my side-by-side hives. It seems they cooperate and don't send their newbees out for flight practice while another hive is having orientation practice.

[we bee crawson]

sounds like orientation flights to me as well. It looks like quite the hussel and bussel bees all about the front of the hive.

[xC0000005]

Around 4:30 in the afternoon it looks like it's raining bees around my hives as they come out for orientation flights. Loud and (if you are not a beekeeper) somewhat scary, but nothing to worry about. Same story on any sunny day. We had a week worth of rain and the first day afterwards you'd have thought they were going to pick up the hive and fly away with it.