Fight club? (I know - don't talk about FC)

Saw this interesting interaction. Is this a fight? What do you think is going on?

Notice the tag team switch at 0:51.

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Robber interrupted. :smile: Beautiful video, thank you for posting it.

Classic dance with the guard bee marking the robber with alarm pheromone from her mandibles. One of the pheromones also partially disables and paralyzes invaders. You can see that the target gets more sluggish and is eventually overcome by the home colony.

I think that bees are a bit like us. If you start a riot, we will respond with non-lethal methods to get you to go away. If that doesn’t work, we will sting you to death! :smile: I just love watching bees, they have so much to teach us.

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I was wondering what all that was about with my bees. I see them pick other bees up and fly away with them. I haven’t seen the fighting like your video but I see wrestling all the time where one bee (I’m assuming one of mine) is trying to carry another bee that looks perfectly normal away from the hive.

Some actually are able to fly away with another bees like a helecopter dropping a load of water on a fire

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The “intruder” seems very docile and submissive. Most robbers are very aggressive.

@Michael_Bush What would you say is going on then? I am curious because I see it at my hive as well.

I was thinking that is was a hurt or infected bee that was no longer wanted in the hive. Could this be it?

I was wondering the same. Yes it could be. But I really don’t know for sure. Something caused the guard bee to question whether it should be allowed in and the bee seemed pretty submissive.

Aren’t bees so cuddly and understanding of each others needs lol. “Oh you’re not feeling well? Here, let me end you right here and now.”

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That thought crossed my mind too. But then I realized that we had not seen the beginning of the fight. We see the “aggressor” already over the edge of the landing board at the beginning of the video. So my thought was that perhaps she had already gone a round or two with one or more guard bees, and was feeling the effects of 2-heptanone (paralyzing pheromone when “injected” by a bee biting the target).

I also thought she was missing one back leg (her left rearmost, if I recall correctly), which suggested that this was not early in the fight. Just musings. I didn’t see the fight start, but this is robbing time of year in many northern climate zones, so robbing came to mind as highly likely for the initiator of the hostilities.

It looks like it is being thoroughly cleaned.

UGH - I should have thought of looking at / saving the video I have from my BeeCam of the whole incident.

I just checked and it got written over. Lesson learned - the hard way. :weary:

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Never mind, it was still fascinating! Look how much we have all learned from discussing it too. I am certainly very grateful that you took the effort to make and post the video, thank you. :heart_eyes:

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