Mysteriousness

Saturday afternoon, Jordan and I opened the hive to see what's what. I had no intention of actually messing with the bees, but we finally got our camera functional and I thought it would be fun to take some pictures.
There were maybe 50 bees in the box. So very few. The first bar, which had up till now had the cleanest comb, now had a huge caterpillar trail chewed through it. Back in the center of the hive, though, next to the giant monolith of cross comb I'm calling honeyopolis, there was a brood comb, one that I'd frozen and returned, now packed with honey and capped.
Of course, despite my intention not to mess with the bees, I ended up cleaning out the slimed honey, dead bees and beetle grubs that had accumulated at the back of the hive. Jordan got some nice shots of things, and then I refilled the hummingbird feeder with sugar syrup. Later in the afternoon I put another coat of paint on the new hive box. While it dried, I wandered about the place. I happened on some bees, over by the south side of the house. They seemed to be looking for something. Continuing around behind the house, I saw that the hummingbird feeder was just swarming with bees. Lovely gold and black ones, just sucking that syrup down. Hundreds of them. I got a nice shot of them.
Now all these pretty gold bees are hanging around the hive. They seem perfectly welcome, and come and go as they like. Where did they come from? Are they the field force, returning home hungry? Are they the swarm that absconded in July, come home to eat some nummy lemongrass scented syrup? Did Beedicca move her brood nest into Honeyopolis, where I can't fuck with it, and hatch out a hundred new workers? Did this weak hive and the tempting food source lure in a wild swarm? I opened the hive today when my sister was over, to see what we could see, and opted to take away the front bar, with the wax-eating caterpillar in it. There were no bees,and no honey, and no nothing but pests in it. I put that puppy in the freezer. All the bee crew were hanging around the middle of the hive--there and the feeder.
I'll be picking up another 10 lb bag of sugar tomorrow, and attempting to finish the new hive. Stay tuned.