Odd Bee Behavior Today

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Hey all! I just finished my honey harvest of my one hive. (the other swarmed mid-spring). After I’m done with all of my equipment - the extractor, any pails, strainers, etc, I put them on a table in front of my hive. I did the leftover comb yesterday and they loved it. Cleaned it right up.

Today, I added the pails and extractor. It’s really odd, but they are flying all around my backyard and bumping into my windows. They’re up on my deck too. It’s just…weird… this has never happened before. Does anybody know why they might be doing that?

Also, Dawn-SD, we should make “Bee Behavior” questions a category! I’d love to see posts and read responses. There are soooo many fascinating things! :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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Hi Dawn, to me it sounds like the bees finished cleaning up your apparatus, and are searching the area for more honey to clean up…

A lot of people advise not to open feed like that. I have done it myself recently, so therefore I couldn’t advise others not to do it. Open feeding does come with associated risks, apparently it can lead to robbing behavior, as well as the risk of bees from other apiaries possibly passing on diseases to our own bees.

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