Dead scouts

No, not something Baden Powell would be worrying about ... I have a bait hive on concrete slabs in the garden. It's being getting a reasonable amount of attention from scouts over the last week. As it's on slabs it's easy to see that a fair number of them are perishing right outside the hive (I've been counting the corpses). I've not seen any fighting and the hive remains unoccupied (and may continue so as a swarm arrived at another bait hive 600 m away this afternoon).

Has anyone else seen this? Does this represent the usual attrition rate of old adult bees? Or what?

I dont know if Iam missing some of this post, But could it be possible that you could have bees from two different hives fighting over the swarm hive one trying to move the other on.

Our hives support several sparrows who in spring to autumn perch on the hives and appear to have dead bees as the main constituent of their meals..

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Originally Posted by Greengage

I dont know if Iam missing some of this post, But could it be possible that you could have bees from two different hives fighting over the swarm hive one trying to move the other on.

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You're not missing anything Greengage ... it was probably just a poorly written post. I'd not seen any fighting over the last few days, but I've not been watching them all the time (I have a life, and more pressingly, a job) so may well have missed something.

Tomorrow is likely to be wet, so I'll look carefully again at the weekend. If they were fighting neither side 'won' as there are no bees in residence!