Trying to swarm?

I was watching the bees this morning while having a cool water break on the back porch.

They normally have their orientation flights around 3:30 in the afternoon but they were coming out of the hive at 11am….and they kept coming and coming. The air was full of honeybees, all swirling around. This didn’t look like orientation……swarming??

I had read somewhere that banging on a pie tin would drive a swarm to pick a lower place to swarm so I grabbed my tin and started banging away.  Before long they were all circling downwards and landed on the hive.

This is what it looked like as they all started marching back inside. Whew!! Thought they were moving on to greener pastures.

I had removed the cover and the top 2 supers yesterday. Only one frame had a tiny piece of comb built. The bees did have some small hive beetles corralled in 2 corners. Moved the bees off and killed them with the propane torch.

So…tomorrow I will check the rest of the hive. Need to make sure the hive beetle larva isn’t messing with the super that is filled with comb and hopefully honey.

I’ve been checking the Beemaster.com website and every other bee site I can find….it sounds like the bees have been back filling the brood nest. Maybe the Queen has no room to lay and is considering leaving with a large part of the population. Will work on that tomorrow.

You would not believe how many bees were flying in the air.