What's she doing?

[phill]

Now in my 3rd year as a beek, I'm still on a steep learning curve (and appreciate all the knowledge I get from others on this site). I spend some time every day just watching my bees, trying to figure out what they're doing. Here's one thing that baffles me:

Recently the bees have been busily working on some flowers (lamb's ear) right near our back door. For the last 3 days, at the end of the afternoon I've noticed the same thing. With the sun going down and all the other bees headed back to the hive, one bee flies all around this little patch of flowers, never landing. She circles around for quite a long time, really, and then heads home.

What's she doing? Is this the supervisor-- checking the work of the others, and going back to give performance evaluations?

[AllenF]

She is normally called U2.   She is taking areal photos so they can plan tomorrows schedule.   

Really, I don't know.   Out of the hundreds of thousands of bees around you, there can always be one bee that can never make up her mind what she wants to do.

[JP]

She's trying to impress you, next time you see, her applaud her abilities and she'll show you another trick.  :-D

Perhaps she's memorizing the location of the flower to give the colony she is from a waggle dance.


...JP