I have seen lots of dying bees with (presumably) deformed wing virus and never seen one with what looked like perfectly normally developed wings but bits missing from the trailing edge of the wing particularly out towards the tip like an old tattered bee gets.  Generally I see one of two things.  Either shriveled up wings that hardly exist or wings that stick out at improper angles.  In either case I have seen such bees crawling on the ground anyplace from a couple of feet up to 30 or more feet from the hive.  I do not think I have ever seen one that could fly more than two or three inches.  No, this bee I saw was not shiny and hairless.  It seemed to fly perfectly normally.  I do not think it was a case of deformed wing virus.

Dick


" Any discovery made by the human mind can be explained in its essentials to the curious learner."  Professor Benjamin Schumacher talking about teaching quantum mechanics to non scientists.   "For every complex problem there is a solution which is simple, neat and wrong."  H. L. Mencken


--------------------------------------------
On Sat, 8/16/14, Ruary Rudd <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [BEE-L] Honey bee working more than one plant
 To: [log in to unmask]
 Date: Saturday, August 16, 2014, 3:40 AM
 
 I have been informed that
 tattered wings may be an early sign of Deformed
 Wing Virus and are not necessarily a sign of
 old age. Was the bee shiny and
 hairless?
 
 Ruary
 
 -----Original Message-----
 
 Richard Cryberg
 
 This was
 not some young bee out on its first learners solo flight. 
 It had
 fairly tattered wings.  I
 
          
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