I started noticing last year there were some black bees showing up at my feeders and I had never seen any before. This year I am seeing black honeybees again and they aren't coming from my hives. Anyone have any ideas about this? My pics aren't great, they moved too fast for me to get a good pic... and dang if the bees were being all friendly and lighting all over me and I went to get up and there was a black bee had been sitting on my side I guess and I accidentally mashed her hard enough for her to sting my inner forearm! :cry:
(http://s5.postimg.org/90zl39wz7/DSCN1215.jpg) (http://postimg.org/image/90zl39wz7/)
(http://s5.postimg.org/a4jpf8hmb/DSCN1216.jpg) (http://postimg.org/image/a4jpf8hmb/)
(http://s5.postimg.org/oc9e3vub7/DSCN1218.jpg) (http://postimg.org/image/oc9e3vub7/)
They are probably from feral hives. I have some black bees in my hives.
Most of my hives come from feral hives.
Jim
thanks sawdstmakr, I was wondering if that was it.... so you reckon that could be some of the genes from the old black bees from long ago?
They also end up black and shiny when they are robbers and get all their hair pulled...
dang! well, there is no robbing going on with my two hives, because I have robbing screens on and was watching both hives to see if the black bees were coming from either one of them. Never saw any.
I had a swarm from the wild several years ago. Try not to capture a swarm of black bees. They are ok, not really mean, they just tend to come off the frame when you pull a frame for inspection. They have also seem to have turned to the "maverick" type, where they will move into a colony, clean out the honey then leave. In other words they tend to join your colony just ro rob it out then leave. It doesn't appear to be a regular robbing frenzy. They will stay maybe a week or two. Just upsets your colony and sets it back. This happened different from the swarm that came in. D2