Attacked by Bees

[snowghost]

Was flying yesterday afternoon and the Phantom was attacked by swarms of bees. The bees didn't fare too well.

 

[MapMaker53]

Interesting. Where are you located? Unless you just happened to fly through a traveling swam of migrating bees looking for a new place to build a hive, I don't know any type of bee that would aggressively attack a drone at that altitude except maybe Africanized Honey Bees (aka Killer Bees) due to the noise.

 

[snowghost]

Interesting. Where are you located? Unless you just happened to fly through a traveling swam of migrating bees looking for a new place to build a hive, I don't know any type of bee that would aggressively attack a drone at that altitude except maybe Africanized Honey Bees (aka Killer Bees) due to the noise.

Somebody familiar with bees mentioned they might be drones looking to mate. I'm in NW Los Angeles. There are a couple hives nearby I discovered while walking my dog, but they weren't aggressive to us as we went by. Bizarre they would be flying that high.

 

[GFields]

Never seen anything like that before. Thanks for sharing

 

[snowghost]

Been flying Phantoms since 2015 and I've never seen anything like it either. Once in a blue moon a bee or two would buzz around the drone, but that's about it.

 

[3putts]

Was flying yesterday afternoon and the Phantom was attacked by swarms of bees. The bees didn't fare too well.

What did the props look like after landing?

 

[Starz]

When bees sense something they don’t like, that information is passed to the rest of the crowd. I’ve seen this issue a few times at this time of year and because bees are a large part of the food chain network, I fly away from them as quickly as possible just to avoid knocking them out of the sky. We need as many of them as we can get, not to mention the work involved in cleaning them off the aircraft.

 

[Martin Healy]

I have certainly never had an experience like this while flying my P4. However, I suspect it may be the noise that is making the making the bees aggressive. I have been attacked by wood bees on a couple of occasions while I was in woodland using a brushless motor battery drill to drill laurel before injecting herbicide. I think that the short busts of high pitched noise from the drill made the bees attack. After rapidly retreating 100M I cautiously started to drill again only to immediately start getting stung again.
All the best, Martin

 

[Capt KO]

Had same. Thought leaves were falling, but from where? Decended and saw the entire bee swarm come with it. Accended at high speed to 400' but couldn't shake em off. Still finding blood and guts months later. One and only time, that's enough.

 

[snowghost]

What did the props look like after landing?

Blood, guts on the battery, body and props. Cleaned off pretty easily.

 

[snowghost]

Had same. Thought leaves were falling, but from where? Decended and saw the entire bee swarm come with it. Accended at high speed to 400' but couldn't shake em off. Still finding blood and guts months later. One and only time, that's enough.

Yes, looking at the real time feed it wasn't readily apparent that there were bees swarming. Reviewing the full raw footage, they followed me home and broke off as I landed.

 

[CoreySnipes]

A+ for musical selection!

 

[tmgrood]

Was flying yesterday afternoon and the Phantom was attacked by swarms of bees. The bees didn't fare too well.

Excellent video and thank you for not using the Flight of the Bumblebee as the choice of music.
That would have been more obvious for most. lol.
Bee's just don't know the meaning of retreat.