okay so here we are on September 20th it is right at sunrise here and it is only
50 degrees Fahrenheit so once again I'm out in the bee yard and I'm inspecting
the landing boards to see what they're getting rid of and wouldn't you know it
the honey bees have cast off again lots of drones also there's a yellow jacket in
the foreground there now it's up to the screen on the right and it's been stung
by bees so much it's just barely quivering there and here on the left
side is a yellow jacket wasp that's chewing away on a carcass which was cast
off by the honeybees in this colony and it looks to have been a drone so this
time of year the bees are getting rid of drones but they're also cleaning
house constantly and I have found an increase in the number of Varroa
destructor bodies that are being cast out and I found some on the landing board
and as some of the other hives where I have an inserted drone counting board
there are bits and pieces of varroa on that so they're really cleaning house
and sometimes you'll find the varroa concentrated in the cells where these
drones are developing so the drones seem to go first it also may be due to the
cooldown that the honeybees are dispensing with their males they won't
need them in winter but I think it's a little early for that I think they may
be discarding them because the cells may actually have varroa in them these guard
bees are defending the colony again Yellowjackets can fly at much colder
temperatures than the bees do so the bee colony is really just waking up here and
when the yellow jackets land they try to scoot in on the edges thinking that
that's a good way to get in but they're met pretty fast by guard bees so with
the colonies as strong as they are I don't see too many successful runs being
made by the Yellowjackets here's a yellowjacket wasp again working over a
drone that's been cast out by the bees so keep in mind this is not a bee
that was going to make it anyway but it is kind of pitiful that it's alive
while this Yellow Jacket tries to bite pieces off of it but it proved
unsuccessful at doing that so Yellow Jacket mandibles aren't the great
cutting tools we might think they are pretty good on soft bodied insects again
it's being run out there in the background by the guard bees and here's
another one trying to chew away again on a developing drone now this has been
torn apart see it's head's damaged torn apart and pulled out again by the worker
bees and I have seen an increase in the number of varroa destructor bodies that
are chewed up and also cast out the bees completely throw them away so it's hard
to get any kind of count there in the coming weeks we are going to do some
parole accounts on the bees we're gonna check out the brood frames but today
we're just looking at the activity on the landing boards again when the
Yellowjackets have that cold weather advantage here's a worker bee tugging
away on a drone that is still partially alive and she's gonna fly it away this
is why you don't see piles of dead bees and parts directly in front of the
colony because the workers actually collect them later and fly them away and
drop them in the grass sometimes 100 yards or more but it's a terrific amount
of effort that gets expended here to discard these dead and dying drones
there's a yellow jacket in the background there it is still alive as it
doesn't move gradually but it appears to have been stung so much that it's
shutting down
now some of the workers that are laying on this landing board in the foreground
that are on their backs may have actually been stung by Yellowjackets or
they may have been discarded by their fellow bees in that colony it's hard to
tell since I didn't actually observe what happened to those individuals but
remember as before if I didn't come out early like this I would not see what's
going on in the landing boards and I would not see all the remnants of the
things being cast out this is pretty much a daily routine this time of year
and the hives are full of honey and that's why they're fanning their wings
so much and they're still dehydrating that and we're about 80 percent capped
in this colony
there's a yellowjacket putting up a pretty good fight another thing I'd like
you to know is when the bees are stinging Yellowjackets one of the
questions that I often get is first of all can bees kill yellow jackets usually they
just bite and repel them but if the Yellow Jacket is tenacious as this one
is and insists on being in the colony it's going to receive several stings
from these guard bees they try to get their stingers in between the joints in
the abdomen they sting its head and neck they sting it around the thorax and unlike
when they sting a person the hard body of a yellow jacket doesn't hold the
stinger so the bees do have an opportunity to sting it several times
and not lose their singers subsequently these guard beads do not lose their
lives when they deliver stings to Yellowjackets so you don't have to feel
bad for them this Yellow Jacket is trying to extend its own stinger and get
one of the honeybees here
you can see that the yellow jack is really slowing down otherwise it would
fly away by this point but I think it's been stung enough times that it is
really incapable of flight
now we do know that the Yellowjackets as we observed earlier in this video are
trying to get meat and fly it back so you know if you're putting out
yellowjacket traps this time of year you definitely want to have some meat
resources in it you'll be attracting these Queens this appears to be a
yellowjacket Queen you can correct me if I'm wrong there but when you see the
abdomen and it has those individual black dots that are not connected on the
abdomen generally that is thought to be a queen I'm sure somebody will clear
that up in the comment section and again as as we predicted it can't fly it's
ultimately gonna die from all the venom that the bees have injected into it
now this worker has decided that the yellow jacket hasn't had enough yet you can
see the stinger pretty prominent there it's kind of a futile defensive attempt
there on the part of the yellowjacket at this point and the bees are doing their
best to bite it but remember bees don't have flesh cutting mandibles so it takes
a lot of work for them to chew anything off like that and I've never seen
honeybees successfully bite another insect apart like a yellowjacket
but they're just so angry that they use that to drive it off and vent their
anger biting the toes there but again they can't even bite the little toe tips
off they do do a good job as we already know looking at this landing board of
pulling apart their own developing brood and it's that soft tissue that these
Yellowjackets go after
here's another colony with another tenacious Yellow Jacket that thought it could get
past the guards another big mistake on the part of this Yellow Jacket
it's kind of interesting that even with a struggle going on with the yellow jacket
that's in there there are a number of guard bees that have all come out on the
landing board and are facing outward just in case other Yellowjackets show up
then they do a great job as shown in this video defending their colonies even
with the wide open landing boards in a couple of hours as the Sun comes out
this landing board will be wall-to-wall bees so it's only during the cold early
hours that the Yellowjackets really even have a chance to get into that beehive
and of course by the time I came out here there were more than enough guards
to fend them off and it's unfortunate for the Yellowjackets that do make it in
there they will be quickly overwhelmed by the bees and stung to death and
discarded
and again here are Yellow Jacket wasps chewing away at another discarded
carcass
and here's a drone on its back flailing its legs it will be thoroughly ignored
by the bees and it will either die from exposure or starvation and a worker will
come out later and just discard that drone here's a yellow jacket that again
has been stung like some of the others and is being dragged out by a worker bee
I hope you found this early landing board video interesting and the ability
to watch how the bees handle intruders like the Yellowjackets and I hope you'll
go out and check your on landing boards right after sunrise especially in these
cold mornings you'll learn a lot about how they're surviving what they're
throwing away and how they're faring against Raiders like the Yellow Jacket
wasp thanks for watching as always