{"id":408,"date":"2006-02-10T08:40:00","date_gmt":"2006-02-10T15:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/fire\/2006\/02\/10\/the-assassinated-honeybee\/"},"modified":"2007-08-17T00:00:28","modified_gmt":"2007-08-17T07:00:28","slug":"the-assassinated-honeybee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/2006\/02\/10\/the-assassinated-honeybee\/","title":{"rendered":"The Assassinated Honeybee"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In February, the cultivated Agave (<em>Agave<\/em> sp.) in my front courtyard here in Tucson bloomed, and the yellow-green Agave flowers were covered with numerous bees and other insects.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/images\/firefly\/2006\/February\/agave-flowers.jpg\" alt=\"Yellow-green Agave flowers\" title=\"Yellow-green Agave flowers\" width=\"480\" height=\"337\" class=\"post-photo\" \/><\/p>\n<p>When I was photographing one of the flower clusters, I noticed a dark, squirming mass of insects hanging from one of the flowers. A <a href=\"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/2005\/11\/22\/africanized-honeybees\/\">Honeybee or Honey Bee (Apis mellifera)<\/a> had been captured and killed by an <a href=\"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/2005\/12\/23\/assassin-bugs\/\">Assassin Bug (Family Reduviidae)<\/a>, which had pierced the Honeybee with its tubular rostrum (beak) and was sucking out its liquified insides.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/images\/firefly\/2006\/February\/assassin-bug-bee.jpg\" alt=\"Honeybee (Apis mellifera) killed by an Assassin Bug (Family Reduviidae)\" title=\"Honeybee (Apis mellifera) killed by an Assassin Bug (Family Reduviidae)\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"post-photo\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Strangely, the dead Honeybee was covered in a swarm of tiny flies. Most of them flew off when I approached, but a dozen or so of these unidentified flies remained and seemed quite busy with whatever they were doing.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/images\/firefly\/2006\/February\/flies.jpg\" alt=\"Tiny flies swarming a dead Honeybee (Apis mellifera)\" title=\"Tiny flies swarming a dead Honeybee (Apis mellifera)\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" class=\"post-photo\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I couldn&#8217;t tell exactly what the tiny flies were up to. Were they feeding or laying eggs? Whatever it was, I have never seen anything like this before. The Assassin Bug seemed quite unperturbed by their presence, and it just hung there contentedly sucking away at the dead Honeybee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In February, the cultivated Agave (Agave sp.) in my front courtyard here in Tucson bloomed, and the yellow-green Agave flowers were covered with numerous bees and other insects. When I was photographing one of the flower clusters, I noticed a dark, squirming mass of insects hanging from one of the flowers. A Honeybee or Honey&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/2006\/02\/10\/the-assassinated-honeybee\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read More &rarr; <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arizona-invertebrates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fireflyforest.net\/firefly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}