Hey guys
There are 30 bees a day crawling around and dying on the ground and when I look at them they have little flies all over them attacking them
Does anyone know what it is or what is going on?
Could be normal hive die off. Could be some humans insatiable desire to spray flowers with chemicals. My guess is normal hive life cycle. The flies are just doing their planetary job.
Thanks heaps I own cats and normally the bees are in the trees but lately they are all over the ground, will this end eventually or will it be a all year round thing?
It is a non stop thing for me except in the winter. As bees age their wings become tattered. Eventually they can not fly. When they feel their usefulness wane they will themselves to die and just walk away from the hive.
Have you noticed the bees making a strong jittery movement, almost like they’re having an epileptic fit? Are their tongues poking out? If so, this likely means they’ve been poisoned by locally sprayed chemicals (Round Up/neonicotinoids etc.), and irresponsibly (e.g. directly on flowers).
Note that poisoned bees can also be sublethal, meaning that if the foragers don’t die from picking up the chemicals on their journeys, they will still bring it back to the colony where they could appear fine and normal but essentially their immune system is severely compromised, the bees die earlier, are weaker, and sick, resulting in more dead bees found at the front.
Spray-free gardening is the go! I personally find weeding almost cathartic, I don’t understand why it’s not more popular 
if not at least as a better option for the local pollinators and biodiversity 
There are about 20 a day all dead on the floor under a certain tree, there are usually also about 10 walking around crawling on the floor, the ones that are in a ball struggling have what look to be fruit flies crawling on them, I have never seen this before in my yard and was so shocked the first day walking out to a graveyard of bees, the first time finding them there was at least 50 dead and 20 crawling around
Some trees and plants produce intoxicating or toxic nectar. Do you know what kind of tree it is, or could you post a photo of the tree and its flowers? This is not a complete list, but just so you get the idea:
A certain type of tulip tree also produces intoxicating/toxic nectar, I believe.
2 Likes
I’ve heard the African tuliptree can be poisonous to bees.
This reply reminds me of what happened when a honeybee got too close to a native beehive’s entrance. This video tells the story.
Is what you’re seeing similar to my video?
In relation to dead bees on the ground: Are the bees working flowers in the tree you’re talking about. If so, that would account for the dead bees at the base of the tree. Seeing as foraging is the last job that bees do in their short life, except for being guard bees, would explain some dead bees on the ground beneath the tree.
You’ll find a lot of dead & dying bees on the ground after a significant rain period, after bees do their house work with cleansing flights.
Bare in mind that bees only live for around seven weeks. Therefore we need to factor in the large mortality rate of bees. Let’s assume that a colony of 49,000 changes it’s whole population every 7 weeks. That means that 7,000 bees will die every week, which is one thousand per day.
yall gonna have them all freaked out.
This is the flies here and there are about 30 a day of the bees on the floor like this along with 15 walking around on the floor
After zooming in on the photo, I can see what looks like a small fly, plus 2 beetle type borers, similar in shape to a banana corm borer. I wonder if they want to lay eggs in the bees bodies.
I think it’s best to monitor the strength of the hive, because it might be normal bee mortality that you are seeing.
With my nucs at home here, cane toads used to sit under the entrance, which is too high for them to reach. My guess was that they were feasting on the dead & dying bees as they got discarded during the night. Therefore I wouldn’t see any dead & dying bees on the ground the next morning, with the cane toads hiding as well.
1 Like
Here are the trees that they are swarming around there are many Birds up there also eating the same flowers
I’m new to bee keeping and this forum but I have lived in nature for quite some time now. The trees in your photo are umbrella trees (Heptapleurum actinophyllum), native to North Queensland, Australia. I’ve seen parrots get drunk on these where I live, and bees loving them, too.
I haven’t found anything online about it being poisonous to bees.
Thanks heaps, A few people have suggested that the bees in fact could be getting honey drunk, thank you for the reply and I will keep an eye out to see this spring if they are in fact dead or just lethargic