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What did i see

3K views 3 replies 2 participants last post by  walter jensen 
#1 ·
Michael thank for quit come back. My bee are buckfash , the one I saw was the was the same marking as my bee . at first i though it was a large drone ,about 3/4 to 1 in. long , the thing that made think it was a queen it had the long body of a queen , as I said just missed picking it up by a couple of in. with was about 3/8 in. Walter
 
#2 ·
That is in the ballpark of a queen's length but more in the ballpark of a Drone's width. It would seem pretty odd for a queen to be running around outside at all, let alone a hive that is not her's and without attendants. If she did it wouldn't be surprising for the gaurds to stop her, but it is a bit of a mystery. Why so wide? and why would she be there?

I have heard a lot of strange stories in the last few years, by people who have been keeping bees for half a century. One of them is virgin queens flying off to mate and not coming back. This was not a common occurance in the past but seems to be happening often now. Maybe it was a virgin queen who happened to land there to rest and got attacked. Unlikely, but the best guess I can come up with.
 
G
#3 ·
Hello Walter,
It sounds like two things were going on.
The afternoon is a great time for house bees to take an orientation flight (and a bathroon break). They will fly and hover at the front entrance for 10 min. or so and then everything returns to normal. During this time it sounds like you had a preditor try to take advantage of the situation. In my area what you described would be a "bald faced hornet"-which looks like a drone on steroids. A little larger and black (like buckfast bees), they take the bees wing muscles back to their nest to feed to their brood (only adults drink nectar). A normal colony can handle this type of situation (some preditors are also scavengers and just take the dead). Keep a watch towards late fall when the bug population is low-you may have increased "robbing" from preditors.
Kevin
 
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