Bees Following to Both Sides of House

[BeeGrateful]

Hi, I've read some postings about a couple of bees following the beekeeper, but I've had an odd phenomenon the last two times I went into my two hives to provide sugar water. Within 15 minutes of my finishing with the hives--and I only provided sugar water; I didn't pull frames--I've had a couple dozen honeybees flying around both my front door (which is where I went in and out), and the back screen door to my house. Going to the back door would have nothing to do with following me, as I didn't enter or exit there to go to the bee yard. The bees aren't aggressive, either when I'm in the hives or when they're flying around the doors. They crawl on my back screen. If the screen door is left open--as the back sliding screen door was yesterday--bees will fly in and just fly around any light source. I can shoo them out and even catch and release them without them getting aggressive. It's like they're saying "you go into our house; we go into yours!" Once it gets dark they leave and don't come back--until the next time I go into the hives...

Has anyone experienced anything like this? Should I be concerned?

[ducheval4]

I have had bees follow me to the house, hang out on my bee tool bucket--which they would be attracted to anyway, and even the cooled off smoker.  Wonder if they are drones looking for a warm place for the winter?

[Matt Gaillardetz]

Rita...this is an interesting observation. It made me think of one other forum post of one of our members having the bees follow her to her home. Where did you make your sugar water, and were you making a thicker syrup that required heating the water to dissolve the sugar?  Bees have keen ability to detect food sources, sugar in particular. The natural nectar has been very limited over the past few weeks. I'm wondering if there is something wafting in your home that the bees are detecting and are attracted to that has them visiting your doorways.

 

[Cynthia Fistler]

On 10/12/2016 at 8:58 AM, Matt Gaillardetz said:

I'm wondering if there is something wafting in your home that the bees are detecting and are attracted to that has them visiting your doorways.

We just witnessed this today! With the nice weather the last few days, we've had all the windows open. Mike was mixing up syrup in the kitchen, to which we add HBH. While he was shaking up the jars, we had about a dozen bees suddenly show up at the kitchen windows testing the integrity of our screens. As I type this, there are a few bees flying around my office window, which is all the way across the house, but even in my office I can smell the aroma of HBH.