Feral Bee ID.

[alpha6]

While out walking today I spotted some bees working some wildflowers. Of course I went over to see if they were some of my bees. The bees were not any of mine as they had a different pattern, one that I haven't seen before. They looked like an Italian or Carniolans except the last two rings of the abdomen were a bright orange color. Now I live pretty far away from the crowd and other then bumble bees there are no other "managed" hives within at least 25 miles so I suspect these are some type of feral bees. Anyone have an idea as to what they could be? I am going to start looking for a hive though it may be a wasted effort given it could be anywhere in a two mile (or more) radius but the thought of getting some nice feral bees is enough to give it a try.

Anyone ever seen a bee with this color pattern before?

[riverrat]

sounds like a little bee linning might be in order

[alpha6]

How the heck am I going to track those bees??? Anyone got a bee pointing dog? Hive or honey sniffer?

[mike haney]

do a search here on "bee lining" or check your library for a book on it. quite fun, i recomend it! good luck,mike

[riverrat]

okay so I sent you on a wild bee chase with abox of honey. even if you found them you still wouldnt know what the are. I guess I will break out the big guns on this one. Take a look at this site and see if you can find what you are looking for http://www.discoverlife.org/mp/20q?search=Apoidea

[Jon Powell]

Some one mentioned to me the other day about dusting a bee with flour to make it more visible to track its flight. I dunno. I used to tie little naughty messages to june bugs and launch them toward the neighbor, and I sure could see them go (very slowly, under load). Not sure you could use that technology here though. "Don't sting me while I tie this to your hiner".) But maybe a quick dab of glue and a string of tissue paper? Silly I guess, but just a thought. I'll go google "bee lining" also to see what our hungry forefolks did.

[wayacoyote]

RiverRat,
The link you shared has some photos of workers with a dark body, the base of the tail is solid orange and the tip of the tail is solid black. Know anything about it? We see those in our hives and I think they're pretty. Of course we have mongrols of all sorts of colors.

[Oldbee]

alpha6
Do you take photos of your bees; on a frame with a lot of them? What you saw may very well be be be bees [sorry, lol.] from a different colony. However, some of my colonies have a mixture of predominantly dark, and 'predominantly light' BANDED bees on the abdomen. The bees are on the frames when inspecting. It could be just the genetics of the drones and the queens. I see different banding patterns in my bees all the time and wonder if it could be the age of the bees. Your thread is interesting to me. I hope to collect and photo field bees and 'house bees' from the same colony and use photoshop to see the differences in banding.