The Bee's are Flying!

Thick ice to torrential rain and back to weather, warm enough for the bees to fly, in four days! It's all part of a year that must go down in UK history.

I noticed the bees on the wing this morning. Between showers, they've been very busy. There's very little, if anything, to collect in the way of pollen at this time of year. They live entirely on their honey which is left for them and supplemented by sugar the beekeeper provides. These tidy creatures still have to clean out their hives regularly, get out for a breath of fresh air, empty their bowels and collect drinking water for the colony. If someone has beehives nearby you may notice little yellow blobs on the window screen from time to time when winter air warms. It's bee shit!

Temperature is very important to bees. They don't hibernate as some might think and will readily fly during the winter if the air gets above 10 degrees Celsius. That is the temperature that is most often quoted, but there are breeders around the UK now, who are breeding bees which have a high natural resistance to the varroa mite. These bees have also proved that they are learning to tolerate the extremes of the UK weather at the same time and can fly upto 3 degrees below the accepted norm.

If the air temperature rises to and above 18 degrees, bees are at their most active. The entire space within a hive will be covered with bees going about their chores. At lower temperatures their behaviour modifies. At 15 degrees they start feeling chilly and begin to form little clusters to keep each other warm. At 8 degrees they are cold and form one large, defined ball of bees. Activity in the hive doesn't cease but has to proceed at a much slower rate which is greatly influenced by the weather. As bees on the outside of the ball get cold, they wriggle their way into the centre where the heat will raise to a constant, around 35 degrees, and the warmer bees are pushed to the outside. This ball, in constant movement, enabling all the bees to survive.

If a bee is caught out and it's body temperature falls below 10 degrees, its muscles start to freeze and it can't move. Strangely, if the air warms and it hasn't been too cold it may survive in a state of inanimate suspension, but if the air cools further, it's destined to die.

Sick of bee facts? :)