Swarmed!

[Slauterhause]

Hello everyone, fairly new flyer, first post. I probably only have a dozen flights on the Phantom under my belt, so today I had a serious scare that I definitely wasn't prepared for. At the end of my flight as I was coming home, at around 200 ft I was suddenly and mercilessly attacked by bees. I couldn't exactly understand what I was seeing until I realized that if I was still 200 ft up, the bugs that were swarming the drone might actually be big enough to cause some real damage. After a moment of brief panic, I made a couple of quick evasive moves, but these guys were determined to fight. This was all happening directly above me, and I could hear the *ping* of them hitting the props and bees were falling all around me. I figured it was only a matter of time before one of the little furry kamikazes actually succeeded, so I did bring it down quick. It was complete carnage on the shell, there were antennas and stingers and heads and thorax-butts all over the place. It took a few beers and a couple dozen q-tips to get it somewhat clean. I guess I'm wondering, does anyone have any idea why out of the blue the drone would be attacked? I was in the wide open sky, nowhere near a tree or delicious flower. Has anyone else experienced anything similar? It's sort of funny, but it could also have turned out very badly.

Anyway, thanks for hearing me tale of woe
Rob


Proof or it didn't happen.
http://youtu.be/2GjJKz7tVaE

 

[Cocoa Beach Kiter]

Wow. That's incredible! Enjoyed watching the video.

I had always thought the Phantom sounded like a swarm of bees. I'd be really interested if the sound really does mimic bees and therefore the swarm went to attack an intruder.

 

[Sasquatch]

Hi Rob,

Although I'm a new flyer myself too, I've seen plenty of videos of people's copters being attacked by birds and sometimes, insects (bees). It's hard to know what precipitates these wanton and random attacks, but with theses larger insects, it's probably best to abandon your flight. Bees, depending on the species, can certainly be aggressive and attack in defense of the colony.

Here's a video of another quad flyer who's craft was swarmed by bees.....

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7NLweylwYI[/youtube]

 

[DKDarkness]

Hello everyone, fairly new flyer, first post. I probably only have a dozen flights on the Phantom under my belt, so today I had a serious scare that I definitely wasn't prepared for. At the end of my flight as I was coming home, at around 200 ft I was suddenly and mercilessly attacked by bees. I couldn't exactly understand what I was seeing until I realized that if I was still 200 ft up, the bugs that were swarming the drone might actually be big enough to cause some real damage. After a moment of brief panic, I made a couple of quick evasive moves, but these guys were determined to fight. This was all happening directly above me, and I could hear the *ping* of them hitting the props and bees were falling all around me. I figured it was only a matter of time before one of the little furry kamikazes actually succeeded, so I did bring it down quick. It was complete carnage on the shell, there were antennas and stingers and heads and thorax-butts all over the place. It took a few beers and a couple dozen q-tips to get it somewhat clean. I guess I'm wondering, does anyone have any idea why out of the blue the drone would be attacked? I was in the wide open sky, nowhere near a tree or delicious flower. Has anyone else experienced anything similar? It's sort of funny, but it could also have turned out very badly.

Anyway, thanks for hearing me tale of woe
Rob


Proof or it didn't happen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GjJKz7tVaE&feature=youtu.be

Great video footage! I had the same happen to me on sunday, but have bee(n) to slow to upload the footage the title would have been "Drone attacked by drones!" Ok, drones are stingerless bees, but all the news don't have to bee facts checked ;-) I'll upload some footage this weekend

 

[Mal_PV2_Ireland]

Haha that's a great video, instead of bringing your bird back down to you WITH an angry swarm of bees I think I would have been more inclined to stay up there moving up and down until I got every last one of them and then bringing my bird back alone

 

[cahutch]

Great. Now the enviro-nazis are going to start protesting against bee killing drones.

 

[plasmo]

Awesome. I have seen other videos of their Phantoms being swarmed by bees. Maybe it has some weird mating frequency or something lol. ..


You should put music "Flight of the Bumblebee" to your video !

 

[Slauterhause]

Awesome. I have seen other videos of their Phantoms being swarmed by bees. Maybe it has some weird mating frequency or something lol. ..


You should put music "Flight of the Bumblebee" to your video !

Most excellent idea! Done!

 

[Sasquatch]

On my 4th flight, was inundated and 'swarmed' by a hord of flying ants. Of course these things posed no direct risk to my phantom, but, I did worry about their guts getting gunked into the motors. Insects are definitely mindless kamikazes and although small, might do damage to the electronics & mechanics on the phantom. At least that was my thinking....

 

[npalen]

I believe I would have landed that sucker over in the neighbors yard! Killer Bees Attack Drone. Government plot?

 

[Werz]

Wow. I usually insist on a hand-catch landing. Under those circumstances, I think I would be willing to forego that.

 

[Dirty Bird]

I'm guessing your Phantom was emitting a frequency that the bees found irresistibly attractive, or utterly threatening & annoying.

 

[slothead]

I would agree with a couple of the posters that mentioned frequency as an attractor. The first time I heard the Phantom I thought it sounds like a bunch of big bees. I am not at all surprised that real bees attack them.

On a separate note (I don't mean to hijack the thread) I flew for the first time today with my iPad Mini and it worked just as well as my iPhone. I always find a shady spot to control from so visibility isn't usually an issue, and it was not today either.

Now back to the bees...

 

[plasmo]

Awesome. I have seen other videos of their Phantoms being swarmed by bees. Maybe it has some weird mating frequency or something lol. ..


You should put music "Flight of the Bumblebee" to your video !

Most excellent idea! Done!

If you filmed in 720/60fps it would be AWESOME if you did some slo-mo at the end where you can see a lot of those bees close up... at least that's what I would do

 

[DBS]

Wow... I've seen quite a few of these bee videos but this one has to be the largest number of bees captured on the video footage... that was one helluva swarm there bro :shock:

 

[MattUNI2001]

Awesome video - that was really cool. I've had bumble bees attack mine as I've flown it. It does sound like a giant, angry hornet's nest as it flies!

 

[MattBW]

Wow, I always noticed lots of bug blood on the props when I land, never seen any actual insects though. Thats scary.

We had around 10 swallows (birds) dive bombing and buzzing our quads on tuesday. It was quite scary and they would'nt let up so we landed. It really didnt show on the film that well, you just see the odd one zoom past close, maybe camera shy? They would come from nowhere everytime we took off. Obviously we breached their airspace They are the birds that swoop incredibly close to the ground to catch insects so I didnt doubt they would be brave enough to get close to the props, maybe too close.

 

[dragonash]

Quickly! Make your Phantom dive into water!
That should be easy to do. Just enable RTH and it will find the closest body of water :lol:

 

[DKDarkness]

Hello everyone, fairly new flyer, first post. I probably only have a dozen flights on the Phantom under my belt, so today I had a serious scare that I definitely wasn't prepared for. At the end of my flight as I was coming home, at around 200 ft I was suddenly and mercilessly attacked by bees. I couldn't exactly understand what I was seeing until I realized that if I was still 200 ft up, the bugs that were swarming the drone might actually be big enough to cause some real damage. After a moment of brief panic, I made a couple of quick evasive moves, but these guys were determined to fight. This was all happening directly above me, and I could hear the *ping* of them hitting the props and bees were falling all around me. I figured it was only a matter of time before one of the little furry kamikazes actually succeeded, so I did bring it down quick. It was complete carnage on the shell, there were antennas and stingers and heads and thorax-butts all over the place. It took a few beers and a couple dozen q-tips to get it somewhat clean. I guess I'm wondering, does anyone have any idea why out of the blue the drone would be attacked? I was in the wide open sky, nowhere near a tree or delicious flower. Has anyone else experienced anything similar? It's sort of funny, but it could also have turned out very badly.

Anyway, thanks for hearing me tale of woe
Rob


Proof or it didn't happen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GjJKz7tVaE&feature=youtu.be

Great video footage! I had the same happen to me on sunday, but have bee(n) to slow to upload the footage the title would have been "Drone attacked by drones!" Ok, drones are stingerless bees, but all the news don't have to bee facts checked ;-) I'll upload some footage this weekend

As promised
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B5Qq_S6J_8[/youtube]

 

[lignow]

The Bee Goddess is angry . Maybe you have discovered something, prop tip sound/vibration freq.