The Ants and the Bees

We've had some interesting weather in Ontario this year.  Some of it has been pretty scary.  A tornado in Goderich, Ontario, destroyed many beautiful heritage buildings and homes.  Red Cross called me and I volunteered in their reception centre for a couple days.

Back home in London we had tornado warnings, lots of heavy rain and high winds.  It was concerning.

This bad weather gets me thinking how my hives are faring.
After a night of particularly heavy rains I went to the yard and after lifting off the outer cover of the hive I saw many black ants on the inner cover.  They had their eggs there too.  I realized that during the night with the heavy rains they probably had to relocate to prevent drowning.

But what really caught my eye was while I worked on the hive, the ants all stood on the sides of the hive.  Many of them holding eggs in their mouths - as pictured.

I did my thing with the hives and closed up.  A few days later I was back again and opened the inner cover.  Again the ants were there with their eggs.

That's when I clued in.  The ants were holding the eggs and not running away with them because they planned to return.  And they did.

No harm no foul.  I don't believe they'll cause a problem since they're between the inner and outer cover.  What's interesting is that they seem to be smart enough to know that my interruption to their new home would be temporary.