Bees...what are they doing?

[Beardy Weirdy]

Good Evening All,

So today I have been busy DIYing the house and was just thinking of calling it a day when the wife shouts through from the garden. 'Your bees, they're acting strange again'.

Sure enough, she was right, I found a small group of bees on the garden path crowding around a queen. Okay so I throw a skep over those to protect them and they move up into it and seem happy enough. So I'm thinking cast swarm possibly?

I then go and have a look at a colony that I call 'Diomede'. (I name my hives after British Leander class frigates, I'm ex-Royal Navy). Anyway, Diomede is my newest and by far my best hive colony I have and only yesterday I saw a small but very active Queen amongst the worker bees. Although, I also noticed that the bees had made two queen cells halfway up a newly drawn out frame. Why would they do that if this swarm of only one week already had a queen?

Well, late this afternoon Diomedes' bees were making a real racket and many of the bees were walking erratically around the doorway and landing board of the hive. They certainly seemed annoyed but didn't pay any attention to me. So I thought, have they lost their queen?

I'm finding the behaviour of the bees all very odd, and just when I think I know what's going on, they do something quite the opposite and send me running to the reference books again!

Any advice greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

 

[enrico]

I am guessing but the queen was probably a virgin. The fuss may have been mating, the group on the ground may have been the same queen or another that got away while she was mating! The cells on the frame were probably because you had no queen so they were hedging their bets and would probably destroy them when all was right!
E

 

[Beardy Weirdy]

Thanks, Enrico,

They are a lot quieter this morning. The cast and queen are huddled up in the skep and Diomede is back to normal. So I'll concentrate on finding a home for what looks like the small cast swarm ever....about half a pint of bees.