Me_Dean
06-19-2005, 06:45 AM
I live in a small house and have window in my bathroom with broken hinges that I boarded up a long time ago and the boards have a hole in them, so guess what. I went outside one morning and heard buzzing, and found a honey bee hive in between the boards and window, so I went into my bathroom and took down the curtain that I've never taken down in a long while and saw the bee hive next to my bathroom window. My question is, after watching the bees for about a half a week so far, I noticed some bigger bee looking type insects(about a quarter of an inch bigger) that are mostly black, with maybe a little orange or redish spots on the bottom of their abdomen. Every once and and a while a certain honey bee notices this black bee and chases it around the hive until the black bee loses the honey bee, and then the black bee just stands in one place, usually with it's feet on the window, not the hive (btw, the space between the window and the suface of the honeycomb is about a half to three quarters of an inch). Can someone tell me about this black bee? Is it what is called a Cuckoo Bumble Bee, that force honeybees to raise their young, or is it some other type of parasitic bee? :confused: