Type of bee please

[johnandyrob]

As title Iv only ever seen local dark mongrels got a swarm call and collected these.

 

[jimmybee]

They look like mine abit of a mix, queen carniolan and a bit of new zealand,

 

[flemage]

look like mine.........mongrel.

 

[enrico]

I would suggest they came from a hive close by the swarm!!

 

[MartinL]

Yea, some of mine look like that with others much different.
Think my three queens were very friendly "game girls"!

 

[susbees]

One leather band, rest dark is a standard Shropshire mutt too...Amm/Carni mixes, very little Ligustica which is more a trnaslucent yellow. Very occasionally we see two pale stripes in swarms. Our preference is for dark Amm-type and swarms are slowly requeened that way when available (even Amm can't mate in this deluge!)...

...swarms from the Welsh side are often darker (and more genetically interesting)

 

[barratt_sab]

One leather band, rest dark is a standard Shropshire mutt too...Amm/Carni mixes, very little Ligustica which is more a trnaslucent yellow. Very occasionally we see two pale stripes in swarms.

We picked up a swarm locally which didn't look like our bees - they were lighter and looked translucent - is this what you mean?

I think I managed to snap the queen by accident as she walked up into the hive (centre of second picture), but it's too blurry for me to be sure...

 

[victor meldrew]

She's totally different in colouration than the workers !
VM

 

[susbees]

She's totally different in colouration than the workers !
VM

Yep, those are they. We get the odd leather coloured queen here...the brood nests are of the non-native variety but most are good and dark and native-type

 

[barratt_sab]

She's totally different in colouration than the workers !
VM

She is indeed - and having cropped the photo down a bit to post it on the forum even I began to feel a bit more confident!

I was a bit surprised to have caught sight of her - they weren't a big swarm, but here's the kind of shot I have been looking through to see if I can find her (beats working... )

 

[johnandyrob]

I would suggest they came from a hive close by the swarm!!

I would have thought so because they look nothing like the local bees and would have thought a feral colony would revert back to local dark mongrel. Unfortunately the people who called me to collect the swarm are unaware of any body keeping bees in their village so I have no way of finding out.

 

[TBRNoTB]

She's totally different in colouration than the workers !
VM

'Back end' certainly looks Queenish, John.

 

[rockdoc]

That's a fine lens, you can even make out (I think) some wax scales on the underside of one of the workers in the first picture.

 

[barratt_sab]

Here's another, which shows them a bit more clearly. My wife boxed them up mid-afternoon and we hived them that evening, so they had had enought time to start building inside the box.