Winter's a comin'

This morning when the sun was shining and the ivy flowers were blooming in the sunshine our bees were busy and active bringing home nectar and pollen. I pottered down the garden to say hello and as usual, when getting in their flight path, I had to disentangle a few of the ladies from my hair (I'll never learn)

I nipped out for a couple of hours, the wind blew up and the weather changed. Recently the temperature has remained between 17 and 21 degrees Celsius or 62 and 69 Fahrenheit. In the United Kingdom that's pretty warm weather for October. When we've been out to check their feeder at night the entry platform has been covered in bees either protecting the hive from robber bees and wasps or regulating the temperature.

This evening it was 7 degrees C (44 degrees F) It's pretty cold. I'm sitting in bed wearing fluffy socks because Bob complains when I warm my feet on his leg. The window in our bedroom is closed. I may even resort to putting a fluffy blanket on the bed!

This turned my mind to wondering how bees regulate temperature inside the hive. I noticed the other night that when you take the roof off to pour sugar syrup in the feeder you can feel warmth radiating from the hole where the bees enter the feeder. It's noticeably warmer than the air around it. Of course they need to evaporate water from the nectar and sugar water to make honey but they also have to keep brood and larvae at specific temperatures to ensure they pupate and it turns out temperature plays a part in which roles the bees eventually fulfill.

Research at the Universitat Wurtzburg (please excuse missing umlauts. My keyboard is not set up for German) at the center for honey bee studies HoneyBee Online Studies UW  have discovered that there are particular bees in a colony who perform the job of regulating the temperature in the hive. They have named them Heater Bees. If you click the above link it will take you to the centre's website where you can see live data for yourself. Apparently their body temperature is significantly higher than those of other bees in the colony. This allows them to make subtle changes to the temperature of cells in which specific larva are developing and pupating. 

It seems the temperature at which larval bees pupate and develop influences the type of bee they will later become. Those who develop at 35C become intelligent forager bees those who develop at 34C are likely to become housekeeper bees who clean the cells and look after the internal needs of the colony.

It is not yet understood exactly how they achieve this although it is hypothesised that some bees can increase their own body temperatures by vibrating their wing muscles. It is known that on very hot days the worker bees will gather as much as a litre of water in 24 hours and using their wings will evaporate this from the hive driving down the internal temperature. 

We've looked at how some drones have a miserable time of it but most of them live an avarage of 90 days. a worker bee at the height of summer will live a mere 42 days while the queen who has a single mating flight then returns to the hive to be pampered by housekeeper bees while she lays egg after egg will live up to 3 years. Even then it's unlikely that she will die of old age. Most likely she'll become less fertile and the workers will bring on a replacement queen. When this virgin queen is ready they either drive the old queen out, sting her to death or the new queen leads a revolt and half the population swarms and heads off to pastures new.

so 42 days, 90 days or a 1000 days. Even the latter seems to be short of a bee's possible life span which seems such a shame when one considers the intelligence and cooperation within the hive.

Sleep warm, Sleep tight.

Katherine xxx