Honey bees scouting a vacant hive for months before swarming

I'd always thought, after much reading over the years, that honey bees scout for a new home only after the mass of bees has left the mother hive in their swarm. This compilation of clips from 2022 shows just how early in the spring scout bees began checking out a suitable vacant, but previously occupied hive, and how they do preparatory "spring cleaning" well in advance of moving in. This will of course save them a lot of time and effort in getting the new colony established if do choose to then they move in. They can also clearly ignore the often quoted conventional (human) advice that they'll fly away at least 300 yards from their mother hive to set up their new home.
In this case, because the swarm was large and from my most valued colony, and showed no signs of moving in on the day they'd swarmed, rather than risk them going elsewhere, I opted to shake the swarm from the tree around tea time and re-locate them to another empty hive, which was largely ignored by scouts through most of this period.
Why not put them into the hive being scouted? Well, it's higher up a tree and so much less easy to access. In any event, a week after I'd caught this swarm, another one from an external source flew in to take up home in this still vacant, and often checked-out hive.

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