Wild queen bees attempt to invade commercial hives, but get slaughtered by rival workers

Jan 8, 2023
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It was confusing to me to read this article because even though it mentions that the invading queens are Bumble bees and the commercial ones are supposedly too. The pic shown with workers entering the hive are regular honey-type bees. I never heard of using hives of Bumble bees to pollinate crops, but using regular bees, yes. And supposedly also Bumble bees don't live in hives and are solitary. Please make an effort in this article to specify and differentiate the two types. Thank you.
 
Feb 16, 2023
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I had to go on and read the scientific journal to understand what this article was trying to say. It's actually referring to cuckoo Bumblebee Queens trying to overthrow the Queen Bumblebee in commercial NESTS which is entirely natural behaviour for Cuckoos but obviously commercial nests are non natural and probably easier to defend. This isn't talking about Bee Hives at all which is a term used for Honey Bees. Hence the confusion.
 
Some of the above confusion stems from confusion over the word "hive",. A hive is a human-made container that houses a colony of bees-- honey bees, stingless bees in the tropics, or in this case bumblebees. Growers do purchase hives of bumblebees for pollination of tomatoes, peppers, and other crops in greenhouses, and less frequently outdoors.
The commercial hive contained colonies of Bombus impatiens, the most common bumblebee species in eastern N. America. All but one of the invading queens that were killed inside the hives were of the same species- B. impatiens. This is NORMAL behavior in nature. Good nesting sites (like abandoned mouse nests) are in short supply and queens in spring fight and kill each other to obtain a good nest. There was only one other dead queen in a hive. It was Bombus perplexus, also a free-living (not a parasitic) bumblebee species.
Most confusing for me was the photo of a honey bee hive labelled "worker bees entering a commercial hive". Terrible choice of photo, LiveScience! Totally unrelated to the article, about bumblebees.