48 Hours Later, Bees Still Confused

Well, this is moderately interesting: after restacking the hive, the girls are still trying to use the old entrance that does not exist now. They're coming back loaded with pollen and trying for the bore hole in the upper right corner. So here's the cronology, with photos.

Tuesday about 1400 we removed the top box which had a bore hole in the upper left corner (for bees returning) opening into an empty box over the inner cover (box completely removed from stack). 99% of the bees were using that entrance. After that there is no longer an entrance there. The bottom box removed too. The remaining 2 boxes were moved down, and a new hive body with empty frames put on as the top of the 3.

Wednesday at 1300, 24 hours later, large clump still trying the old entrance location.

Wondering if the cover was holding some kind of entrance marking scent, I switch both outer and inner cover for ones from the dead hive. (There's no scent on the box, because it's a completely different box.) Paradoxically this immediately caused an even bigger ball of bees to form at the phantom entrance. (Switching the covers did put more bees in the air.) That broke up in about half an hour.

Thursday at 1200, 48 hours later, there are still occasional clusters of bees looking for the missing entrance.

Now, 48 hours after reconfiguring the hive, and nearly 24 after switching the covers, you can still see groups of bees trying that spot. This isn't particularly scientific, but it suggests to me that some bees are really fixated on the visual cue of the top left corner. When several bees land there, that might trigger other predisposed bees to assume the entrance is there, increasing the crowd. The effect kind of comes and goes.