u/Appropriate-Bee-6361

Picture in my garden

I love seeing my girls outside of the hive!! I was working in the garden yesterday and this girl dropped by to say hi! I grabbed a quick picture as she was hanging out on my squash.

Have you ever wondered how Varroa mites spread? If you look closely at the bee in the center of this picture, you can see a tiny Varroa mite hitching a ride on the thorax of a nurse bee.

​As this nurse bee goes about her day cleaning cells and feeding larvae, she unknowingly carries a passenger. When she leans into a cell to feed a larva, the female Varroa mite will slip off and hide inside the cell. Once the cell is capped, the mite lays her eggs.

​Her first egg develops into a male, and her subsequent eggs develop into females. The male then mates with his sisters inside the cell. Once mature, these newly fertilized female offspring attach themselves to more nurse bees, and the destructive cycle repeats.

I'm blown away every time I open my hives and get to witness something as cool this. Here we have one our most prolific laying queens with her abdomen distended into a cell where she will lay one of the fifteen hundred eggs that she has to lay today. It's amazing, she does this all day, every day, and she has the longest lifespan of all the bees in the hive. This is her first year in our apiary, and WOW, she has produced some bees that have made some awesome honey. I think I will be making some grafts for queens from her brood next spring 🌼.

Just a snap from my hive inspection today - Atlanta, Georgia.