Giant bee, Queen?

During their mating flight they do.

Then they go underground and don't come back up.

It might have been a large species of ant, or a queen I guess.

I have seen a few queens, but usually the swarm follows them, actually seen them on my windows for a few hrs with 1000's of bees who followed up before moving on, strange experience

Actually, queens aren't much bigger than wor ker bees....are you sure it wasn't a wasp or a hornet?

Swarms are different from mating flights.

Swarms happen when a hive divides and part of it goes to establish a new hive with a young queen.


And sorry, when I first posted I thought you asked about ants for some reason. Mated queen bees go somewhere they think will be a good spot, not underground.

...or a big fat bumble bee?
And that's right about queen bees - they're not that big. It takes a bit of practice to pick them out from the crowd straight away.

I'm sure it wasn't a fat bumble bee. It took up a whole tree leaf. If you
gave me your email I could send u a pic of it.

Why don't you post it here?

Yes, if you've got a picture please post it here.

Yes, big as a tree leaf tells us as much as saying a brand of motor oil has grit the size of rocks in it under sufficient magnification. Any thing is as big as a rock (however big that is) if you magnify it enough.

About posting it, though, I would have to upload it to a photo service and download to a2k. Very, very slow on dialup.

heres the bees that swarmed on my window in 2004

I'm new to this forum site, I don't know how.

As big as a blackberry bush leaf, not a tree leaf

Can you upload the photograph to your computer? If so, then upload the file to somewhere like: http://tinypic.com/, a free hosting site where you don't even have to register to upload photographs (register if you want to keep uploading photographs for later use and retrieval).