When bees are born, they don't inherently know how to find their hive once they've gone out foraging. In order to learn to recognize their own house, they do what are called "orientation flights." Typically this happens in the late afternoon, which was the time of day I was heading out to check out my hives (smelling like a mouse).
What happens is that all of the spry young bees fly out of the entrance, turn and face the hive, and fly in little circles right in front of their joint.
I had not seen bees doing this until Wednesday. It was impressive.
Here's a video of what I observed. The hive that I filmed was one in the adjacent bee yard.
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