I got a closer look at the mite I found on one of the girls yesterday. These photos and video were taken with a hand held iPhone looking through a 40x magnifier at work (The video is a bit shaky).
These little buggers have one monster of a grip. When I first scraped it off of the bee with the end of my razor knife, It would not let go of the blade. I could not shake it off or knock it off by hitting the blade on the desk. I ended up scraping it off with another blade to get it on the desk for observation. The dead be was on the desk about 1/2 inch away from the mite. The mite crawled over and climbed back on the bee (though at that point it was just a bee head (half a bee?))
Underside
Top side (hairy)
Mite on Bee Head
You can see it crawling around on the "hair" towards the end of the clip.
Underside. I didn't get it on video but I watched it flip itself upright with those short stubby legs.
No comments:
Post a Comment