Orientation Flights

According to Linda of Linda's Bees most days at her hives around 4PM the bees come out for some orientation flights. I have observed the same thing at my hive but the time is 3PM PDT. It must have to do with the location of the sun and bees do not bother to adjust for Daylight Saving Time.

There is no way to tell if these are all newly hatched or just something all the bees do most days so they can find the hive when returning from gathering honey. The red marks on the hive were put there deliberately to assist in finding home. I read somewhere that it might help so I added them.

Apologies for the picture quality but I had to do this with a small digital camera not regular video camera and due the time of the day the bees selected I will always be shooting into the late afternoon sun.

If I had not read Linda's blog I would have no clue what they were up to and assumed robbing but that is not the case. All the bees seem to face the hive as they flit around and there are no dead bees or fighting bees evident.


Half an hour or so later and things are back to normal with a few bees returning from foraging and no more massive activity.