# Praying Mantis and Bee video



## acb's (Apr 14, 2007)

Shot this over a month ago, but fall had been very busy and was only able to edit and upload it now. Was walking by our hives here in our yard before I left to go to one of our other beeyards and noticed something hanging from the front of the landing board on one of our hives. A praying mantis had caught a bee.

It's not exactly a video you can "enjoy" as a beekeeper. Maybe I should rate it PG-13 for scenes of graphic insect violence, but to me it sure is fascinating to see. (Obviously, or I wouldn't have filmed 8 minutes of it to edit down. Not sure what that says about me?)

If you look closely in the first several seconds the mantis can be seen chewing on an antenna and you can see the stinger moving. I hate having to format these videos to upload because they lose so much of the original avi. quality. If there's anyone out there more experienced that has any suggestions to help me with this it would be greatly appreciated.

Two links, one to Zunibee and the other to YouTube.

http://www.zunibee.com/community/viewVideo.php?fileID=61

http://www.youtube.com/user/acbees

Arvin


----------



## Jeffzhear (Dec 2, 2006)

Arvin, thanks for sharing. I hadn't ever thought about a praying mantis as a foe to honeybees, but it makes sense. You did a nice job editing and I enjoyed the when you scanned the front entrance to put the upside down praying mantis into perspective. Nice job.


----------



## pcelar (Oct 5, 2007)

Ditto.


----------



## Laurence Hope (Aug 24, 2005)

Thanks for the video. I have never noticed a praying mantis eating a bee, but we have a never ending supply of black widow spiders that eat them. I combined one hive to another a couple weeks ago, and under the SBB were 5 black widows, along with several bee skeletons.


----------



## BjornBee (Feb 7, 2003)

I posted this last year. This was shot on my back porch. Those praying mantis eat alot more than bees.....


----------

