Author Topic: Bee question  (Read 2189 times)

Digeroo

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Bee question
« on: June 18, 2017, 14:51:43 »
There a load of honey bees in the garden for the first time for ages.  They seem to be at least four distinct colours.

So my question is are bees from the same hive/swarm identical, so does this mean they come from four or more different places?

And what about micro bees, I have some bees which are considerably less than half the size of a honey bees.  They are not hover flies, they are fully formed bees. 

winecap

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Re: Bee question
« Reply #1 on: June 19, 2017, 23:09:26 »
I believe each hive can have a mix of colours depending on which drones the queen mated with. The queen mates several times when she is young and stores the sperm to fertilise eggs for the rest of her life. So she may produce workers of different colours or they may all be similar.
As for the identity of your other bees, I don't know what they are, but I think there are a couple of hundred different species.

Digeroo

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Re: Bee question
« Reply #2 on: June 20, 2017, 11:20:03 »
Many thanks.  The black and orange striped ones are very striking.  Someone at our plots had some similar but they have now moved.  Many of the others are almost black with narrow brown stripes.  Then there are some very dull brown ones which I would say are the natural native bees.

We have some amazing bumble bees some have got very long black and white stripped tails.  The more I watch the bees the more I realise just how many different ones there are.

They seem to love the bramble flowers and the poppies.  After several years with only a few bees now we have loads of them.

 

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