Q: Wasps in the honey supers
I was removing some honey supers today and found a mud dauber wasp nest affixed to the honeycomb foundation. There were viable wasps in the wasp nest, near the stage when they would emerge. I have never seen this situation before. I am surprised my Buckfast bees tolerated this nest in the hive. Have you ever seen this before?
Tom Cogger
Wisconsin, August
Answer
I have seen this before. Honey bee hives are fantastic places to nest. They are protected from inclement weather. They are climate controlled. They are also protected by thousands of honey bees that are working in unison to keep invaders outside the nest. What a great place to live! I have seen all sorts of things living in honey bee nests: ants, spiders, mice, lizards, etc. Of course, these critters must overcome the bees’ natural defenses to inhabit a honey bee hive. Yet, some seem to do just that.
How, then, did these wasps manage to nest in an occupied honey bee hive? A few ideas come to mind. First, does your hive have any type of upper entrance? If so, the wasps may have entered this entrance undetected, assuming the colony was not strong enough to patrol this area regularly. Second, is it possible that wasps built this nest before you added the honey super to the hive? I have seen this happen regularly, even in my own beekeeping equipment. In this case, the wasps may have built the nest in the equipment before you added it to an active hive.
Mud daubers are a type of sphecid wasp. They are quite remarkable. As their common name implies, they build mud nests. These nests contain small cells. While building a cell, the mud dauber stings spiders to paralyze them, stuffs their paralyzed bodies in a cell, and then lays an egg on the spiders. The spiders remain alive and fresh, ready for the larval mud dauber to eat once it emerges from its egg. Break open a mud dauber nest and dozens of spiders will fall out of it. If you do this while the wasps are larvae, the spiders will be alive but paralyzed. You often can see the spiders ever-so-slightly move their legs. This is really cool.
Of course, they build their nests everywhere. I recently moved to Georgia and have since found mud dauber nests all over my stuff: in my grill, on doors of my shop, in my beekeeping equipment, etc. This all happened within weeks of moving here. They will nest in any protected space, including beehives. While I am surprised that you found them in an occupied hive, such behavior is certainly within the realm of the wasp’s biology.
Q: Direction of comb nest at the entrance
Readers: Ray Johnson shared a Facebook post with me, prompting me to elaborate on it here. The individual in the video he shared discussed how common it is for feral colonies (colonies not living in managed hives) to build comb parallel to the nest entrance, rather than perpendicular to the nest entrance like what you see in our standard Langstroth hives.
[Think about standing in front of one of your hives, with the nest entrance running right and left. The combs in that hive are perpendicular to the entrance, i.e., running front-to-back in the hive.]
The individual in the video, then, discussed how this could serve as a windbreak and that maybe this is better for the bees. Perhaps this is what they want and that our way of arranging combs is worse for them. I am going to provide my thoughts on this idea here.
Ray Johnson
New Jersey, August
Answer
This is certainly an interesting observation, but I am not sure that it is universally true. For example, Babu and Amritha (2023) found that cavity-nesting honey bees in the Indian plains regions tended to build combs parallel to the nest entrance, while those nesting in the higher elevations tended to build combs perpendicular to the nest entrance. Seeley and Morse (1976) found that the alignment of the combs was distributed randomly in relation to the entrance of the nest. I found other manuscripts noting the same thing.
Out of curiosity, I reached out to my Ph.D. student, Ms. Kaylin Kleckner, who studies wild Apis mellifera colonies in South Africa. During her research, she hunted for wild colonies and measured various parameters regarding their location, colony genetic composition, etc. I asked her if she noticed a pattern regarding the orientation of comb relative to the nest entrance. She replied that she saw bees build comb parallel, perpendicular, and even diagonally to the nest entrance. Thus, I do not necessarily think the observation noted in the video is generally true. Ultimately, it seems that bees build their combs randomly with respect to the nest entrance.
Even still, this could be a fun experiment that one could easily try. Build a few bottom boards that open at the side of the hive rather than the front of the hive. Then, manage some colonies with side entrances and some with front entrances in the same apiary. You can follow honey production, colony growth, etc. throughout the year. I met beekeepers in the past who shared that they use side entrances, mainly to correct for what they perceived to be an airflow problem when combs are oriented perpendicularly to the nest. Personally, I do not think it matters, but I would love to hear from readers who have tried side entrances.
Babu, C.P., Amritha, V.S. 2023. Nesting sites of cavity nesting honey bees (Apis spp.) in natural ecosystems of Kerala, India. Ecology, Environment and Conservation, May, pg. S314 – S320.
http://doi.org/10.53550/EEC.2023.v29i03s.057
Seeley, T.D., Morse, R.A. The nest of the honey bee (Apis mellifera L.). Insectes Sociaux, 23(4): 495 – 512. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02223477
