a Deborah Hewitt question... 

Any suggestions to calm these guards down and get them back on the roof? I am hoping that a few days of quiet will keep them from bothering people on the ground. Colonies were queenright or in the process of requeening after a split when I inspected. 

my comments..
Not exactly the same context but several years ago I had something like the same problem at a friend of mine's junk yard.  Basically after inspecting the hives late in the spring and knocking down the weeds around the hive the guard bees became excessively defensive.  After reviewing some old ABJ I came to adding robber guards to the hives which almost instantly seem to make the guard bees at the front door of the hive more relaxed and less likely to display defensive behavior.

I should add here that since I do not know where you are or the condition of your hives that at least here when a hives food resources become very low they will also display excessive defensive behavior even with no manipulation.  This is normally easy to recognize simply by tipping the back of the hive. Plus since you stated the hives 'could be' in some stage of not having a queen on board this will often generate the same defensive behavior.

Gene in central Texas

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