bees dragging another out and flying off

[rookie2531]

I am waiting for a coworker to come and open the hive and show me hopefully a good laying queen but in the meantime, I am feeding 1/1 syrup and was watching the entrance this afternoon and saw what appeared a bee drag a dead bee out and fly off with it. I had seen them drag them out before but they both would fall off the edge and the live one would get up and fly off. This was different and unusual to me, it seemed like it was stuck on her and she flew clumsily around, landed a couple times and flew out of sight. Within 5 minutes, I saw two more bees fly off with another bee in tow but the third one was alive as it looked like it was struggling to stay on the board and was being pulled off with help of another. It lost the battle and was flown off by another. All these bees come from within the hive. Has anybody seen this before?

[Kathyp]

cleaning house.

[GSF]

They could be sick, deformed, (DWV), too old or too lazy to work. Like Kathy said; Cleaning house aka house cleaning. It could also be another bee who wants to move in and is rejected by star fleet command.