[cfdengine1]

Last night we had a severe thunderstorm now all of a sudden my hives are not acting like themselves. 2 of my hives have bees that are just flying like its a traffic jam in front of it and are very noisy. Are they about to swarm or is this other bees robbing this hive. I'm using top feeders so I'm thinking swarm.

 

[StevenG]

Reduce your entrance to the smallest opening in case its robbing, or install a robber screen.... If there is fighting, and/or dead bees at the entrance, its robbing. And by now you'll probably know if it's a swarm in progress.

 

[cfdengine1]

I actually took time to go to the hives and just had a seat and watched them. I noticed that the cluster, so to say, followed the sun movement down each hive. Could the hives just have been getting hot enough for some of the bees to come out. These are all new packages and it seem a little early for robbing doesn't it?

 

[bigbore]

Robbing can occur any time one hive sees an advantage over another. I had a nuc trying to rob a weak colony, numbers were on the side of the colony, but the nuc saw an advantage in the size of opening, and number of defenders. but it doesn't sound like robbing to me.

 

[Joseph Clemens]

It could also be orientation flights or you may already be in a honey flow. When were the packages installed? Are there young bees coming into forager age? Are the package hives still taking feed?

Many of my own colonies occupy less than two medium 8-frame supers (I rob them ruthlessly for nuc production resources), yet since we've had bountiful late Winter rains, and wildflowers are blooming prodigiously, my apiary looks like a madhouse of honey bee activity, almost like there's a swarming event in progress every day. This is exciting because our main flow doesn't begin for another week.

 

[AmericasBeekeeper]

They might be taking the only opportunity to fly between rain storms. If there was no fighting,just busy behavior they are healthy not threatened. Reducing the entrance or throwing grass in the entrance will not hurt in either case. We have a lot of rain in Florida and the frenzied behavior is normal. I like to get home in time to watch.