Some Bee Behavior

For those of you that have watched my bee videos you have seen some bee behaviors such as fanning and guarding. For fanning bees flap their wings at the enterence and inside the hive to improve air flow and reduce temperature as well as humidity. Guarding is self explanatory but, the bees that are guarding are alert and perched on their two hind pairs of legs. Now I will show you a behavior called "bearding". You can see some photos of it below.

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This behavior can be done at any time of day and its purpose is mainly to "cool off on the front porch". This is a rather small beard; some colonies can make beards over six inches long. While these bees are bearding they are all dependant on eachother as they connect with the hooks on their feet. They almost seem to form a chain sometimes and for drawing out comb they hang like that one the inside but can stay their for a few days. I hope that I will later be able to show an even larger beard.