Bees Destroying Grapes?

[Jerrymac]

This lady called me today about a big swarm of bees. She had seen them before noon sometime. I had to wonder as she said "there are still a few out there."  I called her back later to let her know i would be there in a few minutes and asked if they were still there. She said yeah there were a few still flying around....... HUH????

So I load up my stuff and head out to her place in the city. There were a lot of little black bees with gray strips, perhaps some sort of sweat bee. There were a few honey bees buzzing the grape vines.

Now I know nothing about grape vines but there were these little green spheres on there not as big as a BB. And then there were some places where there might have been some of these green pods but there was a little tiny white cone. The honey bees I saw were licking around the tops of these cones. The lady told me that those had been the little grapes that the bees had sucked dry. There were a whole lot of green husk or hulls on the sidewalk below the vines.

She said that this morning there was like a "plastic" sheet over the vines. This was the bees covering the whole thing. While I was there, there were a lot of those black bees and quite a few honey bees. But not a swarm.

I guess the question would be, do bees destroy little grapes for the juices if it has been extremely dry weather?

Do grapes have blossums of any kind?

Does anyone know what could have been happening?

[Brian D. Bray]

My grapes look like a small cluster of bb's before they flower and the same after they flower.  The flowers are very small and white and they all seem to open at once.  The bees go at them like mad.  I would say that the little green balls were grapes thatbroke off under the weight of all the bees.  They will actually try and put fifty bees on a cluster of grape flowers the size of a fifty cent piece.

grape flowering occurs for a day or 2 and then it's over.

[Jerrymac]

So by Monday they may not see any bees :?: I will call her back and let her know.....she's threatening poison  :shock:  :shock:

[BMAC]

Maybe the lady needs to educate herself more about grapes.  There is a local grape farmer that swore up and down the honeybees were ruining his grapes.  Eating hole in them.  After speaking with Missouri Dept of Conservation, tehre are other insects that will bore holes in the grapes.  Once the hole is there the honeybees exploit the juices.