I’m toasty warm, sipping a cup of tea and wrapping gifts, watching the snow drift down. You can look out across the fields with the blowing snow and see the white boxes nestled in snow drifts. While its very pretty to look at, it can be gosh darn cold. I’ve always wondered how our fuzzy little friends stay warm since they kicked out all the dudes. That leaves our girls hanging out with the Queen.
A healthy hive will form a hoard, cluster, ball of bees. The bees will cover a number of frames and usually in the vertical center of the hive. The size of the hoard depends on the size of the hive and how strong it is. Smaller hives usually won’t make it through the winter because they can’t afford to move to eat.
An outer shell of bees line up side-by-side, facing into the hoard to create a thermal barrier. At this point, the body heat of the outer layer of bees supplies enough warmth to maintain the bees inside the hoard. This outer layer of bees can be one bee-layer thick, or can build up to a number of bee-layers in thickness.
The bees on the inside can still walk around over the comb and sometimes eat a little honey. Periodically bees switch places, with ones from the inner core taking up a position on the outer core to allow the outer bees to go “inside”.
In order to produce body heat and stay alive, honeybees must rely on honey for energy. Some studies have found that hives of honeybees will consume up to 30 pounds of stored honey over the course of a single winter time, (October through February).
As supplies dwindle where the cluster has formed, the bees will move up. They seldom move to the sides. After all, going up between the frames is far less work than moving the ball of bees around all the frames.
Temperature is a key factor. The colder it is the tighter the hoard. They start to hoard around 60 degrees . That is the day time temperature in October, and it creeps up to that in March. By April, they start to go out and forage. Over the winter, they are not totally housebound, they do go out and spread their wings, use the facilities, and then they scoot back inside where its warm.
I find it really fascinating of how they winter, I mean you can’t very well open the hive to check on everyone you’d let out all of the heat they have generated, maybe one of those spy cameras could be inserted into the hive to see what is going on.
So, while our fuzzy friends bundle up to keep warm, let’s wish them all a Merry Christmas.
Bee Warm!
Bee Proactive 