Bees protect their hive, just like humans protect their home. Upon opening one of our hives for inspection, a wasp flew into the hive. The pictures tell the story, the wasp did not stand a chance.
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Beelievable 
A great story in photos. The wasp was very unwise to go for a hive. Do the bees retaliate by stinging it and so lose their lives or are they using their mandibles as there are so many of them?
I did not see the bees trying to sting, most were grabbing it with their mandibles. You can see the wasp’s wing was chewed and damaged in the last photo. It all happened very fast, I just started snapping pictures and pretty soon they dragged the wasp down in between the frames. I’m sure at some point later on they probably pushed the body out of the hive.
I thought from the photos that was what they were doing! They must sting as a last resort to protect the hive but if there are enough of them they don’t have to waste too many workers. I have been amazed by the strength of bees mandibles when I have been watching the solitary bees building their nests and I suppose honey bees have strong mandibles too.
Your post on the Apiary Industry in Florida 12 October has not posted as usual but I have received the email alerting me of its post 🙂
Sorry about that. It is posted properly now. Seems WordPress was experiencing some issues when I was creating that post last night. I followed with a test because the pictures were not coming up correctly, but looks like everything is fixed now. 🙂