Right you are, Peter

However, we can often have three hive phenomenon happening simultaneously. I will qualify simultaneously as within the mite bomb, robbing season.  1. An almost complete disappearance of hive population with the queen and a handful of bees remaining. 2. Signs of severe robbing in the hive, cappings and cell edges torn out, piles of wax duff on the bottom board. Signs of general mayhem. This is not a casual back and forth shuffling between hives.  I've seen robbing events which could be termed violent. 3. mite bombs showing up in powerhouse colonies. 

Bees casually following another bee to a destination, never demonstrated.  Bees getting caught up in mayhem, a straight line high speed bee highway between two colonies, I'm not sure.  Intent robbers, once the event matures, don't appear to be exhibiting the typical more casual travel demeanor one often sees. Is the quicker purposeful travel sufficient to mimic Seeley's discovered streaking behavior pattern? Many if not the bulk of these bees may not be skilled navigators.
I've thought of conducting some experiments, it shouldn't be too difficult. The difficulty may be in sacrificing a few colonies.

Charles feels that the mite bomb numbers don't add up. Would his math model work if it took account of the phoretic mite infested bees along with the free hitchhiking mites being transferred during the robbing/ mite bomb event ?

I've always been perplexed with the behavioral mechanism of an established colony absconding. I began beekeeping in 1965 and have often posed the question to others, "Have you ever witnessed an established hive absconding event, observed bees departing as a mass event and followed up confirming no swarm preparation in the hive?" " Did they cluster as in a swarm - simply fly away into the sunset?  I'm still searching - any takers ?

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