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
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