My bees do that at the beginning of a dearth, desperately looking for nectar. Also sometimes if I rob honey from them, then some of them are on the lookout for me.

 

You may be getting robbed. Are there any signs of that such as bees wrestling on the landing board?

 

You may be getting robbed.

This.

 

Herndon, if you provide your location in your profile, it will make it a lot easier to give you advice.

 

Welcome to Bee Source. It may be orientation flights also. Agree with AstroBee, give us your location, advice will vary depending on where you are and the time of year. My bees do that after being confined a day or two by rain.

 

Define "all over". +1 to sharing your loc, this time of year it makes a big difference. You can add it to your profile so it shows....Hey can you share a video?

I have found bees to have a big footprint. When the bees are in a flow (we had a fall flow of note), there are so many flights in and out (2 returning every second) that you would not fail to notice them if you lived within 20'. This is purposeful movement from distant pastures straight to the hive. There can be traffic jams where bees are waiting to get in, because they have for example decided the top entrance is THE place to be even though the bottom entrance is available. This is more like hovering behavior within 5 feet of the entrance. This "traffic jam" pattern also happens when something is substantially changed about the entrance - going to a 1" hole from wide open, or moving a top entrance so it was no longer visible but tucked under the lid.

When I have shaken frames into a bin, I mean like 4 frames worth covered with bees, then I have seen hundreds of bees flying aimlessly, which was not pleasant. I think those bees were old enough to fly but too young to have done an orientation flight, so they did not know where to fly to. That had a footprint of 20 feet from where I shook the bees into the bin.

And when the bees are doing an orientation flight, they will fly in figure 8's within about 15 of the hive, more or less in front and above. They also spend a fair amount of time hovering within about 3'.

For robbing, I have seen frenzied activity very focused on the hive entrance. Not really that big of a foot print but jarring.

Hope this helps...sometimes bees do weird things. They are pretty alien.