Bad Bee-havior?

A couple of days ago, we made the drive to Caldwell to visit the bees.  It was 65 degrees and a little humid, but the bees in both hives 02 and 04 were active, despite that it was November 25.  Both hives are doing great.  (Click on photos to enlarge).

 

Hive 02 has rebounded in the past 10 days, since we corrected the issue with lack of ventilation inside the hive.  And in that same amount of time, the population has already grown which we credit to the new frame of brood we added from hive 04. 

Hive 02 growing population.

Hive 02 honey stores.

The bees have drawn out a good deal of comb on the empty frames installed during our last visit.  We spotted the queen, and that reassured us that things are back to normal within the hive. 

Hive 02 new comb in place in just 10 days.

Hive 04 has been busy drawing out new comb on the one empty frame we used to replace the brood frame we took for hive 02 ten days ago.  A few weeks ago we had added a food supplement patty to hive 04 and the bees have been nibbling at it somewhat.
 

Hive 04 food supplement patty.

More sugar water for hives 02 and 04.

Two unexpected things happened during our visit.  First, we noticed that hive 02 had a few robber bees trying to work their way into the hive through the 4” entrance.  The video below shows guard bees at work defending their hive from one of the robber bees.  We weren’t sure if the robber bees are bees from hive 04, or perhaps they are wild bees.
 

Hive 02 bees busy defending their stores from robber bees.

 

Second, after our hive inspection, we made our way back toward the truck to pack up and noticed many bees following us.  They had never done this before.  They were frisky, but not aggressive toward us, still they would not move away from us and return to their hives, no matter how much we smoked them.  We continued past the truck to gain distance from them, hoping they would leave so that we could remove our suits and pack up the truck.  But they kept at us, buzzing around and landing on our gear and on our tools.  It took awhile for us to realize what they were doing, but we figured that they were hungry, or at least desperate to locate food to bring into their hives.  We had added one gallon of sugar water to each hive during the inspection, and walked away with our empty gallon containers.  Mark and I assumed that because there are very few flowering plants and little pollen available, the bees really took notice our empty sugar water containers.  It was challenging to get in the truck, and we did so with our bee suits on and the smoker still lit.  We had a good laugh about the entire ordeal, imagining what we must have looked like, wandering aimlessly in our bee suits, then jumping into the truck to drive off with smoke bellowing out through a cracked window.  It was a fun day.