Most everyday the Honey Bees do an orientation. It gives all the young bees a chance to come out and find where their hive is. They circle around and each day venture farther. Eventually they become foragers.
It lasts 15 minutes to half an hour….then they all head back inside and go back to work.
They climb up the face of the hive and take off….and through all of this the foragers are still coming home loaded down.
The video only catches a small portion of the bees that are orientating. The air overhead has a lot of them circling around.
My “blue” hive is now the the largest and this is their orientation. My “pink” hive may have cast off a swarm while we were gone, but hoping they now have a new Queen and will start building. I think I saw a few capped brood cells through the window in the back of the hive…but the bees were covering it pretty heavily and could only get a glimpse when they moved out of the way. They are bringing in a lot of pollen and that is a good sign. They need it to make “bee bread” which is fed to the larva and newly hatched bees.
The windows are great…but sure wish I had an observation hive.
I’ve ordered 2 IPK Small Hive Beetle traps from www.greenbeehives.com to put under the hives. When they arrive I’ll do a better inspection since I will have to take the boxes apart to move them onto it. The trap will have a tray with mineral oil in it. Once the SHB fall into it they are done. Same with any larva that might hatch and look for a way out of the hive to pupate in the ground and become more beetles.
Hope I will be doing a post on them before long.
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