Bees under hive

[Silly_Bee]

Tucking the girls up tonight I noticed there were a hundred or so bees clustered under the OMF (WBC). Is this normal? If not, what should I do about it?

 

[oxo]

Some of my hives do that. It's very annoying, the bees try to get in via the mesh. 2 ways of stopping it, big landing boards or put some kind of skirt on the front of your stand, I just use a piece of correx sheet. Obviously check its not a swarm though!
Hope that helps.

 

[beeno]

Hi there Silly_Bee,
I have answered this question before on this forum, but I don't mind. In my case it was a large rush of orientation flights. On returning the bees undershot the landing board and ended up underneath the hive. Queen pheromones makes them get stuck under there for a while. Our friendly bee inspector told me to put a board under the landing board to fill the gap! Common problems with OMFs apparently.

 

[Silly_Bee]

I hope they're not planning to swarm...I've only just got them! I saw the queen yesterday, and she was laying happily, so i'd be surprised if she upped and abandoned her babies. But thanks, both, for your reassurance. I'll let you know how I get on.

 

[Heather]

Silly Bee- if they wanted to swarm (not sounding like it here though) SHE has no choice- half those workers would take her- but not without another viable queen about to hatch to ensure perpetuity of the colony.

 

[ShaneR]

Had a similar thing wth my first colony in the first few weeks of moving them to their new apiary, put it down to orientations etc, sorted themselves out within a week or two

 

[Silly_Bee]

Thanks for this photo, Shane. Just what mine look like. Far fewer this morning...maybe they are sorting themselves out.

 

[Lindylou]

Yep we were the same. Had few hundred bees under OMF within a few weeks of hiving our first nuc. They were still there the next morning but had gone by the following day.

 

[margob99]

Although mine don't cluster like that, with this new colony a lot of bees seem to treat it as a "shortcut". They fly under the mesh, and when I lie down to see what's going on under there, I can see them connecting with house bees up inside the hive.

I hesitate to use the word "tongueing", knowing what YOU lot can be like! oh what the heck ... they were tongueing

At any one time I might look under there and see up to a 100 of them doing it. They must be avoiding congestion in the hive; bringing home the bacon the quickest possible way.

Shortcut, see?

 

[enrico]

You need to get this sorted by winter, you can lose quite a few bees each flying day when the weather turns cold. They don't know they can't get through the floor and will die trying to reach the main cluster. Block off the area between the landing board and the ground!

 

[margob99]

Fair point, never thought of that! Will do so when I put the varroa sticky board in, which I plan to do this week

 

[E1M]

Or get new AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL bees!