Bees Doing the Washboard Dance

The bees gather a lot on the front of Lenox Pointe.  It's my only hive with out a slatted rack.  I somehow am short one for an eight frame hive.  I do have a modified one that I am currently using for the South GA Swarm hive and will retrieve it for Lenox Pointe when we move that hive to the farm.  We have slatted racks for all the hives there.

Meanwhile the bees in Lenox Pointe are often on the front of the hive, sent out to help with the heat inside the hive on a hot day.  When they are on the entry, the bees do the washboard dance.  Researchers haven't quite figured out what the bees are doing.  Evidence suggests that although they look like they are cleaning, they in fact are not.

Interestingly, as they are busy washboarding, other forager bees are trying to land.  You can see the landing foragers inserting themselves between the dancers and literally tripping over the dancers on the landing.

I made a video of them so you can see what they look like.


Since I said it makes me think of Bert doing the Pigeon in the video, below is a video of Bert, Doing the Pigeon on Sesame Street:

Circle Dancing and Festooning at the Bee Tree

In the hot summer in a hive box, the bees gather outside on the landing and do the washboard dance.


AI Root in the ABC and XYZ of Bee Culture says that while the dance looks like the bees are scrubbing and scraping the landing of the hive, there's no evidence that they are doing anything other than exercising.

The bees at the bee tree are washboarding all around the knothole opening. Inside the opening as you can see in the picture above and below, they also appear to be hanging onto each other in a sort of acrobatic festooning in the center of the hole.

In an August day in Atlanta (this was 8 AM) it must be awfully hot inside the tree cavity.



When I climbed the ladder and opened the hive box, there were more bees than usual in the box and on top of the frames. I think they are getting invested in hive box ownership! Or at least I am hoping that they are.

Hotlanta Breaks a Record (and so Does This Blog)!

Today the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported:

"Atlanta reached 98 degrees today, breaking a 13-year-old record by one degree.
Forecasters expect another hot one Tuesday and again on Wednesday. Summer's here, a bit earlier than usual."

You can see the bees bearding on the landings of their hives in an effort to cool off. The bees maintain a temperature of around 94 degrees in the hive. In Atlanta today where it was 98 degrees, you can imagine that it gets even hotter inside the beehive unless the bees do something about it. What they do is to send some of the bees outside to lower the heat indoors. Once on the porch, some of these bees fan to increase the ventilation. Others do the washboard dance - maybe to forestall the boredom of just hanging out on the porch.


Mellona, below, was creative in its bearding, making an outline of bees around the bottom box.

Persephone had her bees hanging out in the orientation branch. The bearding in all of these hives would be much denser, but for the slatted rack, the screened bottom board, and the stick that I use to prop up the top cover at the back.

As Atlanta set a record of 98 degrees, this blog with this post sets a record of 400 posts so far.

I've kept the blog for two years and 55 days. This averages out to approximately one post every two days. The blog continues to be a great way for me to keep a record of my bee activities and has been a wonderful way for me to make beekeeping contacts around the country and around the world.

Comparing the beards

I'm concerned about the huge beard on my Destin hive to the right. Are they crowded? Ready to swarm?

The bee-beard on this hive grows every night - in one way this is a good sign because it means that there are more and more bees being born in my hive. I wonder what it will look like in August in Atlanta when it is REALLY hot? Earlier in this blog
(a little less than a week ago at about the same time at night) you can see the hive with smaller bee-beard.
I took this picture at 11:40 PM in Atlanta and by morning the beard is reduced by about half and gradually is replaced by bees who are foraging. They still congregate all day on the front porch where they "dance" until the beard builds up again at night.









PS I added a super to Destin on Friday, giving the bees more room and the possibility for more ventilation. They look just like this picture even after supering...this must be what beekeeping looks like at night in the deep south.

The Washboard Dance on a Monday night

At 8 PM on a Monday night here is what the bees looked like outside of my Destin hive.

They are all doing what's known in the bee world as the Washboard dance. I found an article about it on a website from UC Davis' entomology department. The article said:

"Years ago Dr. Norman Gary and Dr. Stanley Snyder tried to define and determine a purpose for the Washboard dance of honey bees. That
dance is described as bees with their heads pointing down, rocking back and forth on their second and third pairs of legs. They move their mandibles as if scraping the surface.

K. Boherer (Montgomery College, MD) and J. Pettis (Beltsville, MD) took a close look at the behavior and found the following. Workers don’t do that dance until they are 13 days old. Peak
behavior exists between 15 and 25 days old. Dancing can start in the morning, but more dancers are seen in late afternoon and into the evening. They danced a bit less on glass than on slate or
wood, but not significantly differently.

Exactly what they are doing still remains a mystery."

In The Hive and the Honey Bee, the authors suggest that washboard behavior may serve as a "cleaning process by which the bees scrape and polish the surface of the hive."

BTW, for an amazing picture, click on Dr. Norman Gary's name (above)!