Bee incident of 5/11

I had an interesting event with the bees yesterday morning. I got up to find two clusters of bees outside the hive on the ground and on the cement block under the hive.  I also saw a lot of dead bees laying around.  The entrance reducer was gone. 

So I waited for the sun to come out and then suited up to get into the hive and see what happened.  I figured something had pushed in the reducer and it would be in the hive.  It was not.

At first I was scared all was lost. At first I thought the clusters were all dead bees.  Now I think they were cold and didn't dare to move from there.  Eventually, as it warmed up, they began to move and ended up going back into the hive. Aside from the clusters, inside the hive, there were still lots of bees and they seemed fine.

I found the entrance reducer outside the fully charged electric fenced bee yard...back in the brush.  Interesting it's the same spot where the bear, about 4 years ago, got to my hive and took the frames over there to eat the honey. But whatever it was  either flewover the fence or went under that 4-5 inches of space.

Instead of putting the reducer back on, I screwed in the mouse guard and duck taped over a lot of it to reduce the entrance, for now. Also added medicated sugar syrup too. Bees seemed fine after whatever the incident was.

The clusters you see are live bees...even some on the board turned out to be alive.