The Fight

The bees have now drunk 3/4 of the syrup I added on 10/6. The ants have been fewer since I taped down the bottle. I also noticed today that I haven't seen any 'wingless wonders' in a while, and far fewer bees seem to be languishing on the flight deck or being hauled off by their sisters. Hopefully that means we have triumphed over the Varroa Destructor, at least for the present.

It's about 5:00pm now and pretty warm--maybe 70--and there's a bit of a breeze. The bees are quite busy bringing in a bit of pollen and enjoying a lovely afternoon.

I saw a little skirmish about 1/2 an hour ago--perhaps a would-be-robber? One of 'the girls' attached herself to the back of the other and started attacking her. As I watched, I noticed that she was attacking her foe's wing. That makes sense--stop her flying back to the other colony to tell the others. Eventually, the attacker wrestled the other to the ground and flew off.The attacked walked around on the ground a bit, trying out her wings and eventually started gyrating her abdomen. I've noticed lots of bees doing this abdomen-wiggling thing. At first I thought it was some sort of communication method; now I think they do this when they are struggling to fly due to wing damage. It's sort of like trying to wiggle your ears by raising your eye brows--they can't seem to find the right muscles to move their wings--but it's really because their wings just don't work.

I suspected that the assailant had damaged the other bee's wing, but I couldn't see any signs of trauma when I caught her in a jar to take a closer look. She hasn't flown since, so I believe that the wing is damaged in some way and that I just can't see it. The attacked bee kept sticking out her proboscis and rubbing her wing between her hind leg and abdomen--maybe she thought her wing just needed to be cleaned.

I recently started reading a book called 'Pollen Loads of the Honey Bee' by Dorothy Hodges. It was published in the UK in the 5o's and is now out of print. I heard about it initially through someone else's blog and then was finally able to get my hands on it through an inter-library loan from Cal Poly, Pomona. (Aren't libraries great?) I am literally in love with this book. It is so old that it is falling apart--the binding is peeling off and the pages are all yellow. But it is full of illustrations and insightful observations, and there are four little pages at the back of the book with colored tiles, demonstrating the colors of pollens from various flowers. It's such a wonderful book. I don't know why it's gone out of print. So far I've learned the mechanics of the pollen packing process and found out that poppies only have pollen; no nectar.

I'm starting to turn my mind toward gardening and thinking about what spring flowers to pot around the hive. I think it would be lovely for the bees to exit the hive in the spring to find loads of food right outside their door.

My next hive inspection is tomorrow, and I'm looking forward to seeing what progress the girls have made since my last check. Hopefully I'll see the queen too.