Bee behaviour

[Silver]

Hi
I noticed some odd behaviour from my bees today, whilst not the greatest of weather down here - today has been a mixture of showers and a little sun. I tend to wander down to the hives on a weekend just to check activity (they are in the garden) and both hives have been very active with a profusion of bees returning throughout the day with good amounts of pollen collected. On the last inspection everything looked fine, I was intending doing an inspection today, but the weather got the better of me, so i'll leave it to another day.

However I did notice a few bees collected around the bottom board late this afternoon, they seemed to be congregating and possibly grooming, although i'm not sure on that point. An hour or so later and the origional group of probably 6 had turned into about 11 bees, still just all moving around but not going near the hive entrance. Eventually I went out in the evening, and this group were all dead, which is somewhat perplexing. On a cursory inspection some have pollen still on thier legs, and a couple looked to me like relatively youg bees, however I am probably wrong!

So my question is do I have something in my hive that might need investigation, and what am I looking for - or am I just witnessing bees that have decided its then end of thier uselful days and they dont want to return to the hive?

I would of course be grateful for opinions.

 

[Sutty]

I see this too, i suspect the pollen-bearing ones are old bees near the end of their lives which land short and then get chilled, though I suspect the same can happen with bees on orientation flights from recent observations.
It's quite surprising, even though they appear dead, how many revive if put in a jar atop a warm radiator! It makes no real difference to the colony of course, but interesting to see. Generally they will then fly straight back to the hive.

 

[viridens]

I agree.

 

[Silver]

Ok thats great and would seem to answer why there are older and younger bees there as well, as the weather is going to be similar for the next week or so, if I see it again I will try that !

Thank you