Swarm? Doesn't feel right. What are they doing?

[djdhays]

This hive was a cutout installed on March 3, 2012. They swarmed on May 5, 2012. I've since added a second brood box which is not yet full of wax. This video was taken yesterday (July 5, 2012) at around 8:15 pm. Can anyone tell me what I'm looking at?

http://youtu.be/j3MxjRJrDmM

[Bush_84]

Washboarding. This must be the second topic this week about it. Nobody knows why bees do it. Mine did it while they were queenless. Then stopped when they were queenright, but others haven't reported such a connection.

[Mr.Beeman]

Yep... washboarding. Both my TBH and Lang are doing it. Both have queens. I'm thinking the bees are cooling off and want to do something instead of just sitting around. They may as well clean the porch! lol

[Honeypeach]

It looks less like washboarding than just hangin' out outside, maybe due to heat. I thought washboarding was a very rhythmic mass movement - these bees seem pretty random.

[MJuric]

I thought washboarding was a very rhythmic mass movement

I had one hive washboard last year for a good month, every night, and it was much more rhythmic than that. I had forgotten all about it until this post. Haven't seen one do it this year, just LOTS of bearding.

~Matt

[JRG13]

Mine did it with a slight flow and good pollen coming in. It seemed to be related to bearding but where bees didn't need to fan the hive to cool off so instead they washboard and smoothed any irregularities in the surface by chewing on it. My landing board sits on the hive stand, so the whole edge was bee butts in the air while they propolized the bottom to the stand while the landing board was scrubbed religiously during the heat. Once it cooled off a little and I added the 4th box, they haven't needed to beard and 99% of the washboarding stopped and now that a decent flow is on, it's all business and no bees hanging around.