Day Three

I kept an eye on the bees yesterday. The "die-off" seemed to stop later in the day. I saw very few dying bees just bodies. Earlier there had been a lot of bees crawling around before dying.

Most days when I look I have seen orientation flights around 3-4PM. I saw the same type of activity much earlier yesterday and it continued until 7:30P which seems odd so I replaced the entrance reducer. Things finally calmed down at 8PM when it was almost dark but there were random foragers going in and out. Do bees have swing shift? That was when I swept up most of the dead bees and dealt with more ants which came back after had I removed the Diatomaceus Earth powder earlier.

I went out at 8AM today and so far no extreme number of dead bees but there have been orientation type flights going on The entrance reducer is still in place and foragers are moving in and out, something not very evident yesterday. I looked closely and see nothing like bees fighting or protecting the entry so I have decided to leave them alone and assume things are fine inside the hive.

I will leave them alone unless there is another die-off or other odd activity. There were a couple suggestions about the cause of the die-off, worker bee die-off or poison at the nectar source.
It is highly unlikely that anyone has put poison near my hive because of the location.
I have no clue, it seems an inordinate number of bees to be tossed out of the hive and there is no obvious poison source.

So now I wait and go in search of Tanglefoot to put around the base of the hive so I can stop using the DE. I may not know what is happening with the bees but I can take care of the ants.