>>>>>>>>>>
I walked out to the front of one of my two hives in my back yard and
found a very strange sight. There was half a bee (front half) lying on
the ground outside the hive with all the legs kicking.
-----------snip-------
Has anyone ever ran across anything like this? <<<<<
Sure have, wasps of most types can do this. Its commonm enough and
generally there is no danger to your hives until and unless you see
several wasps trying to gain entrance to a hive at the same time. Then
you need to worry a little, but there isn't much you can do except knock
the hive about scaring the begeezus out of the wasps (and annoying the
bees to). If you are having a wasp problem in your hives, then you need
to reduce the entrance so the bees can more easily defend it. A wasp can
kill 100s of bees before it gets killed.
Again though, seeing a severed head isn't anything to be alarmed about.
A queen wasp probably just needed to feed her new young in a new nest
somewhere in the vicinity. They are all over anyway and just as
beneficial as honey bees are to the environment. They help pollinate
things that bees might not, they help in pest control for flies and
catapillers and such, and each wasp species does its part.
--
Scot Mc Pherson
The Mc Pherson Family Honey Farms
Bradenton, FL USA
http://beewiki.linuxfromscratch.org
http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/OrganicBeekeepers/
mailto:[log in to unmask]
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