Yesterday my mom called me outside because one of my hives was swarming. The bees were still in the air when I got there, and something was clearly off. Instead of being a tight cloud of bees, there were bees EVERYWHERE, they were over the garage, in the garden, on the property next to us, and some really high up in the tree tops. They couldn't seem to figure out where to go and for about 15 minutes they all just kind of flew around back and forth, and then they started returning to the landing board of their hive, where they started fanning and calling the rest of the bees back too. In another 15-20 minutes, they had all just gone back in the hive.
That same morning, this hive had a lot of workers fanning out in front of the hive, so I thought they had a queen out mating. I waited and watched for a while, hoping to see her return, but I didn't see her and eventually the fanning stopped. There was a small cluster of bees hanging under the stand, which I broke up, looking for a queen, but she wasn't in there either.
What do you think was going on with all this?
