True or not ?

[monarda]

Just reading the book "City of the Bees " by Frank Stuart [ 1947 ] in which the writer talks of each bee colony as having its own graveyard where old bees go to die and where undertaker bees deliver their loads.
Any ideas anyone ? I can't find it mentioned anywhere else.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

yes, it's called 'anywhere outside the hive'

 

[Poly Hive]

I would make it briefer. Tosh.

PH

 

[For want of a better word]

Anthropomorphic Tosh?

 

[Erichalfbee]

Agree with JBM
I’ve watched them fly out with a body and drop it like a bomb a few yards out of the hive. Often they just push them out on the landing board.

 

[masterBK]

Not quite tosh. As I have previously posted in the past , I have a colony in the garden that seems to deposit the dead including dead wasps in one relatively small patch just a few feet away from the entrance whereas other colonies don't seem to be so well organised dumping them randomly here, there and everywhere. Some seem to fly off with the dead quite a way away and so I have no idea where they dump them. Occasionally you get a colony that seems to lack hygienic behaviour leaving many of their dead on the floorboard. In summary, the behaviour of "undertaker bees" varies somewhat from colony to colony and presumably this has a genetic basis.

 

[Poly Hive]

I had forty colonies sitting on a disused concrete silage pit. The concrete was near black with corpses and on sitting and watching for a while the bees struggled out with corpses, flew a few yards and seemingly at random dropped them.

No organisation I could see but I am just saying what I saw and possibly a scientific team of trained observers might see a pattern. I did not so I repeat its tosh to say there are organised graveyards. Not seen any memorial stones yet either.


PH

 

[madasafish]

Rarely see any dead bees because the sparrows/dunnocks eat them...

 

[user 6228]

I had forty colonies sitting on a disused concrete silage pit. The concrete was near black with corpses and on sitting and watching for a while the bees struggled out with corpses, flew a few yards and seemingly at random dropped them.

No organisation I could see but I am just saying what I saw and possibly a scientific team of trained observers might see a pattern. I did not so I repeat its tosh to say there are organised graveyards. Not seen any memorial stones yet either.


PH

on the other hand I 've seen them fly over house with a corpse (admittedly a bungalow)

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

on the other hand I 've seen them fly over house with a corpse (admittedly a bungalow)

One hell of a bee if it can carry a bungalow - dead or not

 

[thorn]

So far as the colony in my back garden is concerned, right outside my back door. Could they be trying to tell me something?

 

[Erichalfbee]

So far as the colony in my back garden is concerned, right outside my back door. Could they be trying to tell me something?

An offering?

 

[user 6228]

One hell of a bee if it can carry a bungalow - dead or not

 

[Fusion_power]

Title of a new beekeeping book:

'Dead Bungalows, and other Beekeeping Absurdities'

I'm sure there will be a place for historic oddities such as the current crop of "innovative self monitoring IP enabled" bee hives. JBM could donate his picture as the chief absurdity investigator.