# do barn swallows eat bees?



## AKramer (Jul 21, 2008)

do barn swallows prey upon bees?
because they seem to be flying around the area where i keep my hive, so i was just curious.


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## Dr.Wax (Apr 30, 2008)

Only for appetizers.


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## gingerbee (Jul 22, 2006)

Birds do eat bees. Cliff Swallows may only eat drones, becuase their mouths are tender. That's pretty strange. Here's a list of birds that eat bees, though it is dated.

http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Condor/files/issues/v047n06/p0261-p0263.pdf

And from Wikipedia: The Barn Swallow is similar in its habits to other aerial insectivores, including other swallow species and the unrelated swifts


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## BigDaddyDS (Aug 28, 2007)

AKramer said:


> do barn swallows prey upon bees?


Yes they do. And the barn swallows around one of my out apiaries are VERY well fed. They don't seem to get enough of them to make a difference, but it's a bit of a worry when I'm trying to mate queens at that yard. Being that queens fly a bit slower and are a larger target, it's amazing that any return back to the hive at all.

DS


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## AstroBee (Jan 3, 2003)

One of my locations has lots of barn swallows. This year I had a heck of a time getting one of the hives queenright. The problem definitely wasn't virgin queens hatching. So for some reason the mated queens never made it back. I eventually did get it queenright, but it took much more work than normal. However, this is certainly no proof that barn swallows had anything to do with the problem.


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