When it drops to around 11°C, honeybees cluster at the hive entrance because foragers won't fly in the cold. This temporary gathering isn't a swarm, which looks frantic and massive. Monitor for a few days and the bees will disperse once it warms up.
So it is very cold up here today. It's gone down to 11 degrees and the bees are saying, yeah, we don't want to go out and fly in that today. So if you're seeing something like this on your entrance and you're thinking, oh my goodness, the bees are going to swarm, it's probably just a cold day and a few foragers are clustering up there thinking, yeah, it's too cold to go out today, but they'll be back when it's nice and warm and sunny. So don't mistake this for swarming. You will see it when they swarm. They're going to be everywhere. There's going to be big clusters. It's going to be a lot more frantic than that. That is just a little bit of overcompression that can lead to swarming. Keep an eye on it, If you're just seeing that for a first couple of days of poor weather, it's nothing to worry about.
