I am a new beekeeper with a single hive. A few days ago the hive was swarming (no, not a swarm) with bees, thousands of them, all over. It was about 2:30 in the afternoon, and about 75 degrees. I have a small entrance and have been feeding 1:1 internally with baggies.
It looked kind of like the bees were fighting, but no great mass of dead bees on the ground. Not knowing what I am doing I immediately suspected robbing, so followed the advice here and closed off the entrance to the hive entirely with #8 hardware cloth. The bees then clustered all over the front and sides of the hive, but did not appear to be fighting. In fact, they seemed rather calm.
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I ultimately concluded I was seeing orientation flights by new young bees. I went back to the hive and removed the barrier. As the afternoon progressed the bees gradually re-entered the hive and the population in the air dwindled until in the late afternoon it was back to normal. The next morning the bee activity was also back to normal.
Today I am again seeing a large number of bees out of the hive, flying around and around the the hive and stacking up around the entrance.
One question: If new bees fly these orientation flights, and the queen is laying as many as a thousand eggs per day, why is there not a large mass of bees orienting every warm afternoon? I am only seeing them every few days.