When I got the package of bees on Saturday, I noticed that some of them were light in color. Everything about them was 'blonde,' from their very light stripes to the fuzzy hair on their heads and thoraxes. They look very different from the darker bees in all our other hives.
Besides differing from our other bees in appearance, these blonde bees are sassy! When I accidentally grazed one of them while working around the hive, she put her little bee-hind in the air and stuck out her stinger! I have never seen any of our other bees do that. At first I thought I had hurt the bee and that she had partially ejected her stinger intending to actually sting me, and I felt bad for killing her. But then she retracted her stinger!
To see if this was standard be behavior, I started blowing on individual bees to see if they would stick their stingers out. Only the blonde bees in my yard seem to do this!
Fascinating!
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