Odd shaped bee

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tkwinston4

Field Bee
Joined
Mar 9, 2009
Messages
535
Reaction score
1
Location
WBC/Smith/National/nucs in Horsham, West Sussex.
Hive Type
Smith
Number of Hives
7
Morning all

Picked up a small swarm (cast?) yesterday evening (picture should be attached) and on the sheet was an odd looking bee.

Unfortunately i did not get a photo of the bee but it looked like it had no thorax. It had legs, wings, head and abdomen and all the usual parts but its thorax was just a thin bit of bee with legs etc attached.

Now i am saying bee but it could have been something else but it was with all the other bees. I havent had time to check out everyone else yet but from a quick glance they looked normal.

Any suggestions on what this could have been? :confused: Sorry my description is not very good but its too early to get my brain into gear! :)
 
Presumably it was alive? I've seen occasionally odd bees that have suffered some "collateral damage" as a result of my poor handling that has meant surgical removal of body parts - they remained "alive" in the sense that they were still moving around, until I dispatched them.
 
Yes, sad to relate but I've had bees wandering around for a while with just a head and thorax - body having been squished. A sort of stripped-out light-weight sports bee.

Can't explain the bee you saw. It must have had some sort of thorax where the legs were but deformity happens although the bees seem quite good at sorting out anything odd themselves - for example removing diploid eggs. I guess as suggested above it may have suffered some physical damage. The thorax may have been pushed into the body.
 
Yes, sad to relate but I've had bees wandering around for a while with just a head and thorax - body having been squished. A sort of stripped-out light-weight sports bee.

When the wasps predate on a hive they always appear to bite off the rear end and leave the bees walking around seemingly fully functional but with no rear end.
 

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