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Bee behavior is my favorite part of beekeeping. It’s such a neat experience to watch and learn from the bees. It’s also interesting to have scientists explain (or in this case fail to explain) what is going on inside the mind of the bees.

Festoon is defined as “adorn (a place) with ribbons, garlands, or other decorations.”

In this case, that decor is the bees themselves, dangling like chain inside the hive. The video below shows a short clip of this activity.

At one point or was hypothesized that this pose promoted the production of wax from the wax glands – that has since  been debunked.

It’s purpose is deemed unknown to scientists and although there are speculations. Bees tend to do this when building new comb in their hive – some people think it’s a type of acrobatic scaffolding, that they’re measuring to build the comb the proper size, or that they’re just beat friends clustered together. Either way, it’s pretty neat bee-havior.