Invisible Queen Bee

We call queens like this “tiger-striped” for an obvious reason. 🐝 They are incredibly rare in our region, but also incredibly difficult to spot because their markings blend almost perfectly with the worker bees around them. 🐝 Finding one can feel almost impossible as she disappears into a moving sea of thousands of nearly identical bees. 🐝 A lot of people assume the colony is protecting the queen directly, but that’s not really how honey bees work. 🐝 The bees defend the nest, the brood, and their food stores. The queen’s real protection comes from being hidden among tens of thousands of workers where she can remain almost invisible. 🐝 And queens like this are masters of camouflage. — © @hinterlandbees