This past week-end my wife and I were busy around the house. She had been busy re-painting the entrance door off the garage. After working in the garden all day, I was taking a nap on the back deck. She had walked out with the hose behind the house where it gets swampy to wash out her painting stuff. She was using some paint thinner. She started hollering about the bees, which were about 10' away from her. I jumped up and there were thousands of my bees in the air. My initial thought was that they had run out of space and were swarming, but I had recently put another super on top of the hive. I got my gear on, popped the cover off and inspected inside. They had hardly touched the new super. They swarmed into a nearby pine tree about 20' off the ground. I decided not to attempt getting up in the tree to capture them. I set a nuc hive nearby with some old foundation hoping they would move in. In about a half hour they started to fly again....thousands of bees. Within about 15 minutes, they all went back into the original hive. I was happy.
We figured the smell of the paint thinner so close must have bothered them. Thought you might find this interesting.