These events actually happened a couple of weeks ago when the temps were really hot. There was a ton of activity at the entrance to the hives. I got down close to get a good look at what was going on and saw a couple of bees "wrestling". I immediately jumped to the conclusion that my hive(s) was being attacked/robbed by other hives. I know now that this was not the case...
Anyhow, one way to stop robbing or to at least give your bees a fighting chance is to reduce the size of the entrance. By cutting it down to the size of a bee or two, that is much easier for the guard bees to defend and keep out intruders. So that is what I did.
About 5 - 10 minutes later, I was surprised to find my hive looking like this:
Holy smokes - it really was being robbed!!! Not really...but that was my first thought...again completely wrong! After a little research on the web I found that bees will do this when the hive gets too hot inside...bees will vacate the hive so that it cools off and they'll camp out on the box and "fan" it with their wings. Pretty amazing, eh?
I removed the reducer and the bees eventually went back inside... Silly beekeeper...I nearly cooked my bees!
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