I have four hives in a row. Honey is harvested. Hive #3 swarms for eight hours, stops, and hive #4 swarms, and stops at dusk. Next morning all is back to normal for all. Bees coming and going. But I noticed dead bees on the porches of 3 & 4 hive, along with small chips of wax. It kind of looked like pollen. But it was wax. And when they swarmed the bees were chaotic, without their typical bee-on-a-mission deliberate flight. What gives?
Have your bees actually swarmed? I’m wondering if what you’re describing is orientation flights, which can be mistaken as swarming. Swarming is when half of a colony leaves with the old queen.
The wax flakes could be chewed up comb, which could be a result of hive beetle damage. This can happen on the odd occasion shortly after harvesting honey if there has been a significant amount of flooding onto the brood.
I suggest to do a brood inspection, then if you see something unusual, take some more photos to upload here.
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Could be swarming, but it could also be robbing. This is not really swarming season, so your bees may be considering absconding because of robbing.
I have seen piles of wax like that and dead bees during robbing season, which is in full swing right now in California. I like to use a robbing screen, but if you don’t want to do that, you can search the forum using the magnifying glass tool at the top of the page to search the forum for robbing. Lots of members have posted helpful advice and their methods for dealing with it.
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Welcome to the forum Joel! …sounds like robbing to me too! Harvesting at this time of year is necessary with a flow super needing to be removed, but risky for that reason. I don’t know if the robbers have been successfully repelled but even if they were, they or others could be back. Other than limiting spills and hive opening at this time of year, I also use robbing screens and have beach towels on hand to dampen and throw over the front of a hive when robbing starts. The towel should almost completely block the entrance so that the robbers get thrown off enough for the guards to organize better. It also cuts down on the honey scent for the time being.
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Thanks for your response, and your experience. This is my first year doing this.
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Thanks for your response, and also your experience. Another forum member thought it was robbing too. This is my first year doing this. I’ll definitely try a reducer or a screen next year.
Question: is there a season/month or time that robbing generally occurs?
August, September and October are prime robbing times in my location. It will be made much worse by using external feeders, or storing sticky equipment outside near the hives
Robbing can kill a hive, so that is something to think about if you want to do something this year
Yep, I’m pretty sure that’s what happened. I live in the central California delta region. Definitely will have to order a couple boxes of queens and bees next year. But they come in April, which is a late start for them, in my opinion, to draw up comb and store honey.
But overall, I can’t complain. Out of four hives, three were harvested for honey, and they blessed me with a lot of honey!
Thanks for your very appreciative advice.
Joel
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Hi Jeff, thanks for your response. In response, the wax nuggets/flakes are small—about the size of pollen, which is what I originally thought it was. But when I squeezed and rolled it between my fingers, it was definitely wax. I have Apivar strips inside, but I’ll definitely do an inspection in a week or two. And a couple of weeks later I’ll put the honey supers back in to feed them through the winter.
Joel
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If they are Flow supers, please don’t put them back on the hive. They will get jammed up with propolis and crystallized honey over winter, and take hours to clean up before you can use them again.
Traditional supers are fine to go on, if they are relatively full. Otherwise they are just empty space for the bees to heat over winter.
We do a delicate dance when trying to care for our bees! 
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