gwilymhardy
25-04-2009, 01:27 AM
Hi,
My name's Gwilym and I live in Aberystwyth, Wales. I was in some nearby woods this afternoon when I saw a honey bee land on a wall. It looked like an exhausted one - dropped onto the wall, tried to crawl but didn't get very far, then started curling up. This is something I've seen before, where a bee looks like it's just run out of batteries and dies.
But this one, after curling up and tipping on its side, kept moving. It was jerking around, like it was having a fit. It's abdomen expanded and contracted, curled inwards and outwards, and moved from side to side. It's legs would go from being clenched beneath its body to out stretched, where it would rotate them. It occasionally looked like it was biting the stone. It's wings were doing nothing, nor it's antennae.
My friend and I sat watching this for a good ten minutes, with the bee becoming if anything more active, but looking less able. After about ten or twelve minutes another bee appeared (this one flying normally), but was making an awful lot of noise with it's wings. A second one came soon after and they began to fly past very close to us, in a rough circle around where the first bee landed. We left once a third turned up, since they were making an incredible volume of noise and we didn't fancy picking a fight with them...
I was wondering if this was normal, or normal but unusual, or just plain wrong. It wouldn't have bothered us, but we're used to seeing bees, and (as I said) seeing bees die from exhaustion. We assume this one died, because it certainly didn't look right. Was the bee under attack from a parasite? It looked normal until soon after it had landed, and then got progressively worse.
Any ideas?
Many thanks,
Gwil
My name's Gwilym and I live in Aberystwyth, Wales. I was in some nearby woods this afternoon when I saw a honey bee land on a wall. It looked like an exhausted one - dropped onto the wall, tried to crawl but didn't get very far, then started curling up. This is something I've seen before, where a bee looks like it's just run out of batteries and dies.
But this one, after curling up and tipping on its side, kept moving. It was jerking around, like it was having a fit. It's abdomen expanded and contracted, curled inwards and outwards, and moved from side to side. It's legs would go from being clenched beneath its body to out stretched, where it would rotate them. It occasionally looked like it was biting the stone. It's wings were doing nothing, nor it's antennae.
My friend and I sat watching this for a good ten minutes, with the bee becoming if anything more active, but looking less able. After about ten or twelve minutes another bee appeared (this one flying normally), but was making an awful lot of noise with it's wings. A second one came soon after and they began to fly past very close to us, in a rough circle around where the first bee landed. We left once a third turned up, since they were making an incredible volume of noise and we didn't fancy picking a fight with them...
I was wondering if this was normal, or normal but unusual, or just plain wrong. It wouldn't have bothered us, but we're used to seeing bees, and (as I said) seeing bees die from exhaustion. We assume this one died, because it certainly didn't look right. Was the bee under attack from a parasite? It looked normal until soon after it had landed, and then got progressively worse.
Any ideas?
Many thanks,
Gwil