> Allen Dick recently wrote in Bee Culture in June 2002 in an
> article about our bees, that he saw some remarkable little
> black bees with wings longer then the bees-  - - to the
> extent that the wings actually stuck out behind the bees.

These were in the last yard we went to, as I recall.  The bees weren't
malnourished or unusually short as I recall, the wings looked longer than
usual.  I'm not all that observant and wasn't all that serious in my
examination -- I had no plans to write the story at the time -- but I've
looked at a lot of bees and these just looked different enough to me to be
remarkable.

I don't know about you other beekeepers, but I look in thousands of hives
every year, and bees are like people.  Every one is different.  Most are
pretty 'normal' looking and fall into racial and seasonal norms so they are
pretty much alike, but every now and then you see something different.
That make you sit up and take notice.  For example, I noticed the attendant
bees that came with my first Kona queens this spring were smarter than
usual and could understand windows.  I was impressed. I enjoy and respect
bees that seem smarter than usual.

Anyhow, in most of the hives where Dee pointed out the dark bees, I didn't
see a huge difference, but in these particular hives I saw some bees that
looked different to me.  These bees were not stunted, but the length of the
wings, or _maybe the way they carried them_ was markedly different to my
eye.  When I work with bees, I often am unable to talk.   I didn't try to
put it into words until after, and I'm not totally sure what I saw.  As I
said, my camera was in the process of downloading to the notebook, so I
didn't take a shot.

At the time, I wasn't planning to share my observations with the world.
Even the trip to Lusbys wasn't planned beyond dropping in to say, "Hi".

allen
http://www.internode.net/honeybee/diary/