Found a sick girl

Found this one about twenty feet / seven meters from the hive in the grass. Picked her up and took her to the deck.

Is this just the natural ending to a life of hard work? Something else?

And

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One would imagine if it were just exhausted it would stay still. My exhausted bees simply stay still for a while on return to the hive.

Was it ear-ly in the morning? :smile:

Just kidding. I get bees like that when the varroa load is high. I think it is a sign of viral and other diseases which hit the bees hard when the varroa are very numerous. Have you done a sugar roll or alcohol wash test recently? If not, I would do one pronto and consider treating ASAP if the count is high.

Something has bee rattling around in the back of my mind. The reason I think she is sick is not just the movement. If you look at her wings, they are not neatly tucked away. While she doesn’t have overt DWV or K-wing, that is not a normal pattern of a bee holding her wings when walking on a flat surface. The two sets should be neatly held together and almost parallel to the abdomen. They are not aligned that way in your bee. So I agree, she is sick, and I stick with pointing the finger of fault at varroa, until proven otherwise.