Some friends of mine started their first hive this spring. They've had a few challenges so far this year including losing their queen a couple months ago. They weren't sure if the queen was replaced or if the hive swarmed but they knew that they ended up with a new queen. It's been about a month since that happened and there haven't been any new workers, only drones. This means one of two things, either the queen couldn't mate in their area and is only laying drones or the hive has laying workers. Either way without new workers being produced the hive is doomed.
Some good news came along though, not far from their hive someone found a new bee hive between some hay bales. This is great news because they could get their old queen back and the hive would be saved! They asked for my help in recovering the swarm and I gladly accepted. When we got to the farm where they keep their hive the owner was happy to see us and we went over to see the bees. While we were walking over there I was telling them about getting calls about bee swarms and how the first question you should always ask is "Are they fuzzy or shiny?". I then realized I should have asked that question long ago because they told me that these bees were shiny.
This meant that the "bees" were actually wasps. Bees are fuzzy, wasps are shiny. We walked down to make sure and indeed these were yellow jackets. This meant that their hive was still doomed, without a mated queen the workers would die off and without young workers to replace them the hive will become weaker and weaker until there are too few bees to keep the hive working.
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