Found this bee walking around near the hive. Rather odd. I thought the reason bees die after they sting is that their guts are pulled out.
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Probably attacked by an insectivorous wasp or hornet. 
Yep…wasp ate it. It just took a little while to die.
That’s what wasps do to bees when they are sweet feeding. The cut off the abdomen to feast on the honey, saves having to get into the guarded nest
I’ll be on the lookout for the culprit then. we h=can’t have that sort of bad behavior in the yard.
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Gruesome…never seen this before. Glad you posted it, motivates me to put out a wasp trap!
Careful how you position it.
have a look here for a really comprehensive treatise on wasp IPM
https://www.waspbane.com/?page_id=1000
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Or it got injured by the beekeeper… They can live quite a while with no abdomen.
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Probably a wasp/hornet attack. Poor bee.
Further proof that insects do not feel pain? If my abdomen got torn off I’d be writhing in pain.
mercifully- probably not for long…
Just witnessed this phenomenon myself… a bee found its way into my house tonight and met it’s fate with a fly swat which separated it’s abdomen from the thorax… the bee continued to act fully functional thereafter.
I ended up squishing it to put it out of her misery.
Similar to this but a bit more livelier:
Was just searching for how long a bee can live without its abdomenand found this. I found a bumble bee without one