Honey Bees buzz around in the afternoon (evicting drones and possibly awaiting return of new queen?) скачать в хорошем качестве

Honey Bees buzz around in the afternoon (evicting drones and possibly awaiting return of new queen?)

Western Honey Bees (Apis mellifera) at the hive behind the visitor center at Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge, in Brazoria County, TX, USA, buzz around with more activity than I've seen before. I'm not at all a Bee expert, but from what I can gather, unusual activity like this could be related to either hive robbing, where Bees from one hive invade a weaker hive and steal their honey; or it could be related to waiting for a new queen to return from her mating flight. There should be some fighting when robbing occurs, but to my eyes, it doesn't seem like there's any fighting going on. So I'm leaning away from hive robbing. At about 0:42, a large Bee with an orangish abdomen returns, and I wonder if that could be the new queen? (The drones are also large, but they seem to have darker abdomens.) After the return of the possible queen, there's still a bit of buzzing, but there seem to be fewer workers at the entrance of the nest. It also seems like they might start to evict the drones. At around 1:19, it seems like a worker pushes a drone and they fall down to the ground, and then this seems to happen again at 1:48 and 1:51. Apparently drone eviction is part of the natural cycle of hives, and it happens sort of around this time of the year, but I wonder if in this case, it could be related either to hive robbing (robbing workers get rid of the drones) or to the return of a mated queen (workers get rid of drones after mating is complete)? It anyone has any ideas what's happening, please leave a comment, and let me know.