Mating flights

[Erichalfbee]

Erichalfbee - that does sound (the offscreen bit) pretty similar

Beeno - No EQC's as we knew from pagdens to go back into the Q- half 4-5 days later

Nevertheless got me worried, so checked on them on the way home from work. One opened cell, one being torn down (the two we left on a pinned frame), bees calm and patches of polished cells
Going to leave her to it now

Yay!
I love it when a theory comes together. Good for your new queen. And they weren’t swarming away either. A good result.

 

[drdrday]

Then I noticed the swirl of bees, a bit like a twister drifting slowly across the yard behind the hives. They never got higher than fifteen to twenty feet and dispersed when they reached the trees at the perimeter. Nothing hanging, no cluster and back at the nuc, more activity but this time more orderly as they headed inside.

I saw exactly the same as Swarm earlier this year when a new queen went off on a mating flight. A swirl, twisting upward to twenty feet before they then went back into the hive. More bees than I expected to go off on a mating flight, but definitely not a swarm.