HUGE BEE hive!!!!

Aussie Pythons & Snakes Forum

Help Support Aussie Pythons & Snakes Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Status
Not open for further replies.
Yes you are quite correct, i have surveyed many 100's of feral bee colonies and the majority have slit crack entrances or small holes. There is a particular reason for this. The bees guard their entrance to protect from predators. It would be unwise to choose a large open entrance. Beekeepers use the technique of reducing the hive entrance to prevent robbing from other colonies. In the situation where the bees were coming out of the same entrance as the cockatoos, i suspect the cavity gets smaller inside and the hive is probably some distance down the trunk.

Bees are fascinating to study, in my job i get to do a range of field work and lab work. For example this Winter i numbered every bee in a colony as so i could tell each bee apart as so i could observe certain behavioural traits. I dissected 11,000 worker bees to assess their ovary activation status during the swarming process. I watched 100 hours of footage of the Asian honeybee species Apis cerana and Apis dorsata to measure their dance angles time and their right or left handedness. I raise queen bees artificially and artificially inseminate queens. I control fly swarms to nest boxes containing nasanov pheromone and study the complete process of swarming and navigation. I've attached weights to bees to test energy consumption, aerofoils to slow their flight, i have even reduced the wings surface area to see what effect it has on speed. I fly helium balloons in remote national parks with a net and bee queen mandibular pheromone to survey the male populations in the drone congregation areas (DCA's) in the canopy. From there we can determine colony densities by the diversity in the male population. Best of all, even when your researching, bees produce honey and i get to extract a few tonnes per year :).

There is so so much more, but it's getting way off track from the awesome swarm in this thread (it's quite a big one to)

Cheers Gird
 
Awesome Swarm! I wish your local as i need more colony's to add to my apiary plus you would rid of them for nothing!

There would be a hive/s somewhere close by..
 
hornets most definately are but I'm not sure that we have them here yet(if we do they are probably fairly localised still).
We sure as hell have them When i lived in townsville i saw them all the time at school.. i Personally really hate paper wasps.. i have never felt there sting but just the look of them freaks me out lol
 
A little research reveals we do NOT have any species of hornets in Australia. Hornets belong to single subfamily of wasps not represented here but they do occur in Asia and Europe. The so-called “Australian Hornet” is a species of wasp, also known s the “Yellow Potter Wasp” or “Mason Wasp”.
What you may be thinking is a hornet could be a large Mud-dauber Wasp. We used get them in the whealtbelt and in Carnarvon WA. They were bright orange and black and the biggest ones were a good 3” or 7.5 cm in length. There are a number of species around and most seem to be yellow and black.

Blue
 
get a peice of wax board box light it on fire let it burn a bit blow it out then while its still smoking jam it in a bottle and put the bottle near the hive the some will KO them.
it worked on mine that wil in a large bird box.
 
Thank you for all your in put!!! After that storm the other day they have now gone!! Thank you girdheinz, that was very helpful!!!!
 
Starr9,

I am pleased for you to hear that. It must have been a tense and worrying few days.



Gird,

That work you are doing is amazing. Numbering all those bees cannot have been a lot of fun. And as for the stage of activity of the ovaries, well... I can only wonder at the reaction you’d get when someone asked you how you had spent your day and you replied: “Checking out ovaries.” I have got to say that the number you quote would be enough to have anyone picking spots of light off the wall and putting them into a basket. One thing I am not too sure about is if the best thing about the job is the honey or the fact that you actually get paid to do it. The honey or the money? Either way, I guess they are both sweet rewards.

I must say that insect flight is something that has long intrigued me. The clicking mechanism and the resultant number of wing beats per second I still find amazing. It’s on a par with the humming bird’s remarkable abilities – to alter the wing angle while maintaining such an incredibly rapid wing beat. I wasn’t aware that drones from different colonies congregated, particularly at tree top level. Do you use DNA to separate the various origins? I had better stop there but it really is fascinating. Thanks again for your insights.

Blue
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest posts

Back
Top