Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Washboarding at Metpropolis





Here are some residents of Metpropolis 'washboarding' at one of the entrances.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi there,

I haven't heard the term washboarding applied to bees before (I've been at it now for 6 years) and I'm curious about your meaning!

Abelisto said...

Thanks for the comment, Kathy.

Washboarding is difficult to capture in a still photograph. My old copy of "ABC and XYZ of Bee Culture" describes it this way:

"they [the bees] may sometimes be seen over the front of the hive with heads pointing down in a forward and backward movement much as a washerwoman scrubs her clothes over a washboard." [p55] While they move in this fashion, their front legs look like they are scraping the wood surface and their mandibles may move back and forth as if they are trying to chew something off the hive..

Abelisto said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
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