Festooning Bees

Even after I added a second hive body a few weeks ago, the bees had been bunching up at the entrance in the evenings. So last week Nancy helped me open the hive and move frames of brood up a box to encourage them to "move in" to their new addition. It has helped, but some of the bees are persistently at the hive entrance, and a lot are there through the night. When I checked this morning, I found a string of bees dangling from the landing board. This is called festooning. When we rearranged the frames, I had seen bees linked up together across the spans between the missing frames--like a garland. It is a normal part of young bee behavior to link together in this way when they are secreting wax and making comb. I was a little surprised to find them hanging off the bottom board, but who am I to tell them to move?