Bees Attack Drone!!! Swarm of bees attacking my DJI Mavic Mini. Crazy Footage.

Swarm of bees attack Drone!

Mavic Mini attacked by angry bees!!

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Imagine walking out to your driveway and seeing hundreds of bees chopped up on the ground...

[demoworld]

My drone was just attacked by bees. Thats what made me come in and check online to see if anyone else had experienced the same thing.

[pcadore]

Wow! As a beekeeper this is very interesting...the bees captured in your still photo are male honey bees (drones). Drones will congregate in an area and wait on a unmated Queen bee to fly by and mate with her....the tone of the quad was probably similar to that of a queen bee in flight and they tried mating with it.

[nolancrider]

Just happened to me and was looking to see if it happened to anyone else. Pretty crazy

[thegardenimpressionists]

Hello AEM
Just found your post and the comment by the beekeeper. I agree that to me they look like male bees -drones(!), with BIG eyes.

I've just filmed a big bat in our yard feeding during the day - they never do this normally during the day, and it's probably 'cos of the dramatic lack of insects around this year. Anyway, I filmed it twice, once in the afternoon, and once the following morning with my Lumix Bridge camera. It was only when I started putting a YT together and looked at the footage on a big monitor, that I could see quite a few bees whizzing about. ( We have 6 no-intervention bee hives all dotted 20 to 30 metres away from the yard area).

But then when I slowed the footage down and zoomed in, you can definitely see some bees changing course, and flying towards the bat, and trying to follow it. I wondered whether they were drones (which don't have a sting) - mistakenly chasing the bat as a potential queen bee to mate with, silly though that sounds, or female bees annoyed maybe by the bat's sonic emissions.
I reckoned the male drone bee idea was most likely, and I reckon your footage probably confirms this. Honey bees only mate in flight, (it's thought) about 50 metres above the ground in special aerial congregation zones (acz), so either you happened to fly into one of these, OR... all the honey bee scientists should know about this, 'cos everything I've read implied that the drones use chemical pheromones emitted by the virgin queen be to track and find it within one of these acz's.

Maybe they just go for anything that moves!! Which is why they have such enormous eyes, compared with worker honey bees, which you can see them polishing with their legs, just after they emerge from the hive and take off in the early afternoon.

Anyway, thanks for the video. It's made my day!

My bat one is here, though it's not as scary or sexy as yours...



Best wishes
Julian
PS It kind of puts me off getting a DJI drone to try to follow the drones in flight ....sounds like it'd be a disaster for the bees, if not the drone... 😊😊

PPS Drones always seem to sound angry in flight - being bigger they're much noisier than normal foraging worker bees

[ThjeshtLife]

Being attacked like that by a gang of bees is crazy. You're probably the first one with this experience.

[timothysevertson]

I had a similar experience, but the bees swarmed me. I sat perched on a cliff over the Pacific. Quite warm. I lifted off, set the home point, put it in sport mode going towards the ocean. Not a minute late, a swarm was flying all around me. They weren't attacking because I stayed still. They eventually left as quickly as they appeared, but I was wondering if it had to do with the drone or were they just passing through

[JG-mwfm]

Nice video 👍
That happened to me once...i made the mistake of bringing the drone back right away which brought the bees straight to me. I ended up getting 2 bee stings right on my neck.
Stay safe buddy ✌

[colinwatts]

Just happened to me in Sydney. Scary, I’m only a few hundred metres from the beach so I flew out to sea for as far as I could and the still followed! Had to bring it home and land it whilst still being swarmed. Same as you, it was covered in bee parts. What surprised me was the speed and aggression of the bastards! I agree with many and think it was the sound

[davidjd]

I just looked up a bees do 1200 flaps per minute, while a dji drone does 6000 per minute. I would assume Drones make very similar sound frequencies of a bee. Maybe the Bees thank drones are giant bees?

[anilbaksh]

My HS720E got attacked by those same bees today. I took it up well over 100 feet and they were still chasing my drone.

[johnk]

Is that a Canadian accent ? I live in central Africa - Kenya. Most times I get my Mavic Mini up in the air here in Africa, it seems to attract Swallows (birds) - they dance around my mini, and fly all around the mini wherever I go. They are very quick and nimble, but I do worry that I would fly into one of them

[sdtamarinera]

I got attacked like this today! They even landed and remained with the drone for several minutes.

[Caleb_Johnson]

Happened to me today! Only a few bees though, no where near as many as were attacking your drone.

[GeneralTieb]

Imagine if you had a bumble bee 🐝 skin on that mavic at the time

[iancalvincampbell]

Wow… I thought I was
The only one this happened to. I flew my DJI Air 2S over my house and it hit swarmed too.
It is a mess to clean up and not fun just don’t fly near bees.

[SretloW]

I had the same yesterday! 🐝
Cleaned my drone with glass wipes

[BjEddy]

that is awesome video Adam, honestly, I think the sound was their draw (maybe) but I have never seen any example of what you have here. I honestly hoped it would happen to me, I think the video is very clear. Never considered what the person below said about it coming back to him, I think you had a fairly good idea they were gone. The aftermath of Attack of the Bees is something, you are wise to be careful when handling it after, thanks for posting this.

[MjrBullets]

Yes, my bees attack my drone but not in the numbers you had makes me wonder if those were africanized. Then I had a hummingbird attack my mini.

[Adembar]

Wow, Did you decide to be a beekeeper and sell honey? What did you use to clean?Congratulations from Brazil.🤗🙏