[dogmechanic]

Did a Mighty Mite treatment on one of my hives yesterday. So was a lot of movement of boxes and of course a lot of heat. My first try and I left an opening and it heated hive up enough but didnt get hot enough to do the whole
procedure. Found out what I did wrong and will try again. It was about 85 degrees with 200% humidity and the heat, so there was a lot of bearding.
My question is that late afternoon yesterday and most of today where lot of bees flying around hive. A lot of them were just flying the figure of big O's about 1-2 feet away from the hive. Just flying big loops constantly. I couldnt keep my eyes on just one in the crowd but I dont know if any went into the hive. Don't know. My question is this a sign of bees trying to rob this hive. Why are the bees doing this. A friend of mine thought it could be robbing and said put a wet towel over the front of the hive, Still flying circles. Did not notice any fighting on bottom board. Usually use screened bottom board but used a solid one for mite treatment. Left it on because when it gets above 80 will have to do mite treatment again.So opened both top and bottom. Bottom 2-3 inches. What bothers me it these looping O's by a number of bees. Robbers???? Just dont know. Looks like me on my first date, I knew where I had to go but I just drove around and around and I finally went in and I got robbed

 

[Fivej]

It sounds like you are observing orientation flights. Google it and watch some vids. With robbing, the robbers fly right into the hive. Quick in and out with fighting on the landing board. J

 

[hagane]

I like the wet towel idea!

That idea could be good for more than one thing too. Its possible they might like the moisture just for itself, and for cooling. And this is the first time I've heard of it, despite a lot of looking at other research by others.

I'm not an expert, but some people say if they are robbing you can see the bees fighting in front of the entrance? What does the entrance look like? And when people describe robbing they say you can see capped honey 'TORN open'. Also, it may not be so much the treatment that may have caused the robbing, but how long the hive was open that may have caused it, if this is the issue. (This one Canadian guy's youtube beek channel he states a rule of never going past a certain number of minutes for keeping the hives open past X.) (But I don't know if he's right or wrong about the x minutes; but his hives are nice and he's quoting about 30 or 35 minutes for how long to limit how long the hive is open.)

I'd probably space out the second treatment a few days because of the hive being disturbed so recently.

Also here's an idea for you to think about...

In Saudi Arabia they found that a bunch of our soldiers were getting sick. For a long time they couldn't tell why. Then they found out that soda pop acts completely different when it gets really hot. (And possibly maybe hot enough some of the plastic particles get in the soda?) Who knows. But this was what was making people sick over there. They found out that even though we thought soda pop wasn't harmful to us, it could act differently in high heat.

So, why I'm bringing this up, I wonder if you need to be careful about using the oxalyc acid treatments in the hive for certain temperature ranges, by that same principle (and for the brood especially)? (Humans think they know everything you know? And then we figure out we really don't.)

Another idea...

This one guy who does observational hive videos has shown that the lower the temperature the less active the bees are. In one of his videos he even shows that there's certain temperatures where the bees won't fly at all but wasps still can. Because of this idea maybe when you do this, if you chose the lowest temperature of the day to do the treatment also might help to not provoke a reaction...sometime after sun up (but not at night)?