Bee devilled

[Daytona500]

You probably have it pretty well cleaned by now, but if it happens again try some WD-40 contact cleaner . It will clean the gooey mess and is safe around all the electrical components

 

[Drone alone.]

You probably have it pretty well cleaned by now, but if it happens again try some WD-40 contact cleaner . It will clean the gooey mess and is safe around all the electrical components

Daytona500, Thanks for the tip mate. Yes I have pretty well got it cleaned up now thanks,still a few places that are very hard to get at,but with some very careful picking with wooden tooth picks I was able to get most of the bee debris out. I managed to find a brand of baby wipes that didn't have any nasty chemical additives and they pretty much cleaned all the gunk off the main body of the drone. Took it for a trial fly yesterday and all seems ok. Thanks for your input. Phil.

 

[Droniac]

You indirectly have raised a good point. It is possible that the sugar present in the nectar can, given time, oxidise to acid, a good reason for cleaning I think.


As an aside, bees do not normally transport honey, they transport nectar. Honey is, from memory, partially digested nectar and once reguritated into the combs the liquid is concentrated by forced draft evapouration to form honey.
This is one reason it keeps so well, either there is too little water in it or too much sugar in it, or both, for anything to 'attack' it.
If I remember correctly the only time bees might tranport honey is when they truey swarm i.e. when they intend to increase the number of colonies. It's 30+ years since I kept bees so if I am in error you have my apologies

Interesting thanks. Godspeed Droniac

 

[Droniac]

A ceramic coating would certainly help, very much so.
Mothers CMX Ceramic Spray Coating (1st product) is available Worldwide (afaik) brilliant on almost any surface, auto, caravan, shower screens.
Even suds at the carwash just falls off it.

When mothers first came out I used it on my Sportster. In fact we all did. Love their products ever since. Ima try that. Heard about it. Never moved on it. Thanks! Godspeed Droniac

 

[ashyt16]

No bee chopping footage? Just for educational purposes.

 

[JDJohnson]

W.r.t. to bees/wasps a reminder to be careful on the ground as well. Many different species of wasp out there, any one of which might trigger an allergic reaction you didn't see coming. Might be a good idea to have an epi-pen in the first aide kit. Be careful, especially during the summers, etc.

 

[garrytre]

If you're talking about honey bees, Apis mellifera, it's pretty unlikely that bees were actually attacking your drone, more likely you flew through the middle of a swarm.

To get a colony to attack, you'd have to be pretty close to their house. And if it was an attack, you'd have nectar - very thin - instead of honey, on your drone.

When a bee colony outgrows the hive or hole it's in (usually late spring), half of them + the old queen leave, to find a new home. They fill up with honey to tide them over and to make new wax combs, until they're all set up in their new home.

PhiliusFoggg - Worker bees are always sterile females. I doubt there would be any drones (in this case, male bees) in a swarm - the queen only mates once (but with lots of drones) and stores sperm for later, so no need for drones in a swarm. And drones are never involved in defence. Drones are only there for one thing, and eat food, so they're only tolerated when necessary.

I've been bushwalking, 2 days pack carry from a road or car, when a swarm has passed around us. Super scary, loud and disorientating, but aside from a few collisions, no contact.

 

[Deleted member 103366]

Garrytre, thanks, I did know that workers are sterile.
The reason for my wondering if they were drones/male is that I seem to remember speculation that the vibrations/noise sent out by drones/propellored-variety triggers the mating flight response in males and attracts them. In the video I remember the bees in camera had blunt ended bodies with the overall shape that was similar to those that I saw in my hives.

 

[garrytre]

PhiliusFoggg

Well, being an ex-beekeper, now ecologist and behaviour analyst, I've found this interesting and followed it up a bit.

Wikipedia is pretty good for bee stuff.
>workers are sterile Laying worker bee - Wikipedia

> drone mating flight triggers.
weather - warm, still, dry. That gets them out of the hive. Then once they are away, find a queen by pheromones & vision.


From somewhere on this thread

Why do bees attack drones? [Videos and cleaning tips]

Why do bees attack drones? Well there's a whole bunch of signals that drones give out that tell bees that they could be a threat - here we look at them all!

droneflyingpro.com

The top video

the guy might be a drone expert, but he certainly isn't a bee expert.
Bees will defend their own hive against vibration, rapidly moving shapes, smelly animals, etc, and then the pheromone thing kicks in, so more bees will come to help, but bees away from a hive won't attack anything. Individuals will defend themself if you grab or accidentally crush them. But the cost/benefit of defending empty airspace is negative. And the electromagnetism etc etc - pretty speculative. The study mentioned is comparable to showing that warmth is bad for you by using an oxy-acetylene torch on your arm.

The second video

clearly shows a small swarm. At 0:15 and 0:20, the bees aren't targeting the drone, they're several metres away, and nowhere near a hive.
At 1:08 he says the bees are following it. If (a big IF) that's true, it might be because there's a splattered queen on his drone. Swarms basically stay together by smell.
At 2:50, again, you can see a few bees definitely not attacking the drone. Then, at 3:30, he flies up into the swarm again, and says "Oh, we've got bees again'. At 3:55 he shows a few bees again not attacking the drone.
And if bees were really attacking something and getting smashed up, he would have been severely stung by now.

 

[Deleted member 103366]

Thanks.

I had a period of laying workers in one hive. Their laying was, from memory, 'all over the place' mainly around the outer edges of a frame whereas the queen tends to layup a frame in some sort of order, I seem to remember from the centre out.

Some perfumes set bees off too, my Mum couldn't go near my Dad's hives.

It used to be I could smell a sting or something released in the process or a crushed bee, one of the 3.
I worked my Buckfast hives bare handed and often bare armed. I could feel a bee, on bare skin, change its grip if it going to sting, not a frequent occurrence. My British Blacks required gloves and a bee suit lol.

Bizarre the things you remember.