Episode 23 continues my ongoing, detailed review of 'The Lives of Bees' by Thomas Seeley. Check it out on Podbean, or wherever you get your podcasts!
Homestead news:
My sweet greyhound, Kaylee, had dental surgery last week. We had to drive to Columbus to see the specialist. She suffers from CUPS (chronic ulcerative periodontal stomatis), which causes a huge amount of inflammation and pain. She lost all her back molars 2 years ago in the same surgery and had a rough recovery. This time, she lost all but 6 teeth but had a much easier time. We were better prepared and these teeth didn't have quite as deep roots so the procedure was much faster than before. She is recovering really well, and her gums are actually pink now for the first time in her life, instead of a fiery red! Very happy it is all done with as she just turned 8 years old, and it's always scary to have them go under anaethesia.
In other news, my garden got a little munched by some deer but most of it was already netted and survived. Phew! It's really taking off and I love it. The tomatoes are just starting to flower, the corn is really getting some height, my beans have sprouted, and I just planted the squash. As always, my different mint varieties are going wild, which I love! I've been cutting huge bouquets of it to place around the house, and then I dry the leaves to use in the coops as a freshener.
Hive news:
Honey frames almost ready for extraction, including one full super from Saskatraz bees
Had a 1st beekeeper out to watch me do an inspection, and we talked about her hive
Queen cup = supersedure cell if there’s nowhere else to lay! (aka “my Saskatraz hive is bonkers!”)
Long Langstroth/top bar; back pain issues
Nucleus colonies all have laying queens, although one is rather small (will monitor her)
Chapter 5: The Nest
The nest of a wild colony contributes fundamentally to a colony’s survival, and this chapter looks into the form and function of wild nest sites to determine how they differ from managed hives, as well as to isolate those aspects that affect survivability.
“By looking at the nest of a wild colony as a survival tool that extends beyond the bees’ own bodies, we will become aware that beekeepers risk disrupting the adaptive biology of their bees by housing them in movable-frame hives that are crowded together in apiaries.” Pg. 99
Natural Nests in Trees
Seeley references his own study from the mid-1970s that he conducted with his first scientific mentor, Professor Roger A.Morse, then the professor of apiculture at Cornell University. Seeley was a young student just beginning to look into what wild honey bees look for in nesting sites. His goal was to describe in detail natural nesting sites, and by doing so determine what typical properties of such sites (cavity volume, entrance size, entrance height, etc) were a preference of the bees or merely what was commonly available to them.
36 bee trees were used for this initial study, found by the author or by advertising in local papers for people to contact him about bee trees they were aware of. They decided to dissect the nesting sites found in these trees, which required cutting them down and transporting the section of the tree containing the nest to the Cornell laboratory using the vehicle they had available. This resulted in 21 bee trees being examined. Of the remaining 15 trees that could not be fully dissected, 12 of them were positioned in such a manner that allowed Seeley to take measurements of certain key features of the entrance areas.
The entrances of the 33 bee-tree nests studied showed the following:
79% consisted of single openings (the others had 2-5)
56% of entrances were usually knotholes, 32% were fissures in the trunk, and 12% were gaps in the roots
23 of these nests faced South, 10 North
58% were located in the bottom third of the nest cavity, 18% in the middle, and 24% in the upper third
The average size of the nests entrances were just 29 cm-square/4.5 in-square (Langstroth standard entrance opening is 75cm-square/12in-square)
A later study conducted by the author demonstrated a tendency for bees to nest high in a tree with 90% of the 21 nest entrances examined being higher than 4 meters/13 feet.
Dissecting the bee trees from the mid-1970s study determined that the tree cavities occupied by honey bees were:
Tall and cylindrical; on average 156cm/62 inches tall and 23cm/9in in diameter
Average volume of nest 47 liters/12.4 gallons; only slightly larger than the 42 liters/11.1 gallons of standard deep box Langstroth hive
Inner walls coated with propolis several millimeters thick; as were the floors and ceiling in older occupied hives
Propolis often coated around and just outside the entrance
The length of the passageway through the trees trunk that bees walked to enter/exit averaged 15cm/6in, with one outlier being 74cm/29in (gives an idea of thickness of walls/insulation)
Examining the comb in the 21 nests showed:
On average, total comb area was 1.17 square meters or 12.6 square feet (approximately 13 deep Langstroth frames)
Most of the comb consisted of smaller worker cells
On average, 17% of comb consisted of drone cells
Measurements of the worker cells were not taken at this time
The bees organized their comb by storing honey in upper region, brood below, with a broad band of pollen stored between the two areas (as we’re familiar with in our managed colonies)
On average, the colonies had 15.1kg/33.2lbs of honey stored by the time of examination (late July-early August)
No sign of disease found in comb or brood (this was before the introduction of varroa and tracheal mites)
Nest-site Selection
Seeley posits that honey bees do, in fact, carefully choose their nesting sites, the process of which begins predominantly in late Spring and early Summer (May-July). This scouting for a new home starts before the process of swarming has even begun, when foraging bees stop looking for nectar and pollen, and instead begin investigating potential nesting sites. A scout bee might spend as long as an hour closely inspecting a site, inside and without. The consistencies of properties between nesting sites led the author to surmise that scout bees assess these properties specifically in regards to the suitability of the cavity. However, in order to demonstrate this as a preference, instead of just a consistency in what is available, he searched scientific and beekeeping literature for information on nest-site preferences of wild honey bees, only to come up empty. As initially frustrating as this was, it quickly led to excitement as he realised that he had located a “region of uncharted territory in the biology of Apis mellifera).” pg. 112
To begin to determine nest site preference, Seeley set out bait hives in groups with varied elements and then noted which attracted swarms. The boxes within each group were spaced far apart (10 meters/33 feet) on similarly sized trees with equal visibility, exposure, and location. Each group would demonstrate one preference of the bees; one box matched all properties typical of a nest site, while one would be atypical. For instance, to test a preference for small nest site openings, the author set up 2 identical boxes except one had a typical entrance size of 12.5 cm-square/2 in-square, while the other had a large entrance of 75cm-square/12 in-square (found in Langstroth hives).
Seeley built 252 nest boxes and positioned them in small groups throughout the Ithaca countryside in the summers of 1976 and 1977. He attracted 124 swarms, and determined 4 key aspects of entrance preference (size, direction, height, location), and 2 features of the cavity itself (volume, whether comb is already present).
Entrance size:
Of 14 test sites with entrance differences, the smaller entrance was consistently chosen by wild swarms
Entrance Direction:
Tests sites with entrances facing southeast, south, or southwest had higher occupation than those facing northerly
A study conducted in Canada found that Southerly facing hives were less likely to have entrances plugged by snow and frost during the winter, allowing adequate hive ventilation during this challenging period for the colony
Entrance Height:
8 tests sites were established and 6 swarms were caught there; all of the swarms chose the nests with higher entrances
This is consistent with the height of wild bee nests
Entrance Location:
12 pairs of nest boxes were provided, all with the same cavity size, though one box of the pair had an upper entrance, and the other was at floor level
10 of the 12 pairs attracted swarms with 8 of those swarms selecting the box with the bottom entrance
Cavity Volume:
Set up 14 test sites with 4 boxes of varying sizes: 10,40, 70, and 100 liters (2.6, 10.6, 18.5, and 26.4 gallons). Of these, no swarms chose the smallest size box (10 liters/2.6 gallons) but 11 swarms moved into the larger boxes; indicating that 10 liters/2.6 gallons is just too small.
Next, Seeley set up 10 more testing areas with just two different sized boxes: 40 liters/10.6 gallons, and 100 liters/26.4 gallons. 7 swarms moved into the smaller of the two boxes; none moved into the largest one.
Did not test the upper range of nest size further
Conclusion: 10 gallon is too small, and 100 gallon is too large, making the preference somewhere between.
Further tests, given an option of a cavity between 10 and 25 liters (2.5 and 6.6 gallon) or between 17.5 and 25 liter (4.6 and 6.6 gallon), Seeley found that swarms readily occupied the 25 liters/6.6 gallon boxes but never the 10 liter/2.5 gallon, and rarely the 17.5 liter/4.6 gallon boxes.
These results fit with previous studies that found that wild honey bees in this area of the US require approximately 20kg/44lbs of honey to successfully over-winter, which will not fit in a 10 liter or 17.5 liter box.
Further studies by other scientists in different locations indicate that the lower limit of cavity nest size appears to be dependant on how much honey is needed for winter survival (with bee races native to colder regions having larger nests in order to store more honey); pg 117-119.
Combs in Cavity:
Seeley set out 12 pairs of 40 liter/10.6 gallon nest boxes; one of each pair contained old, dark wax comb. The other box was empty. 4 of these pairs attracted swarms with 3 moving into the box with comb, and one into the box without. Interestingly, the author found that, at the site where the swarm chose the box without comb, the box with comb had been taken up by yellow jackets, making it unavailable to honey bees. Is it possible this would have been the chosen box if the wasps had not gotten there first?
Overall, even this small sampling seems to indicate a preference for nests with old comb.
Nest-site Properties Not Important to Bees
Seeley experimented with a few different aspects of nesting sites that did not seem to result in any preferential treatment by the bees. These included:
A tall, thin entrance vs one of the same area but circular
A box with a floor of dried sawdust vs soggy sawdust
A box with solid walls vs one with walls containing 25 holes, each one 6.35mm/0.25in in diameter
A tall box (100cm/39.4in deep by 20cm/7.9in tall) vs a cubical box of the same volume
The results of these tests showed no preference. In fact, in the boxes with sawdust, dry and damp, the bees simply cleared out the debris. For the box with holes, the bees plugged them neatly with propolis. Apparently, the above aspects have no real effect on the suitability of nesting cavities, according to the bees. Pg 120.
Comb Building
This section of the chapter goes into great detail about the importance of comb building to a newly swarmed/homed colony, as well as how the beeswax comb is formed. Seeley even outlines exactly how much nectar is needed to build just a small fraction of comb. I’m going to summarize some key points to keep this accessible, though I do recommend reading this chapter in full if you have the time.
Key points when considering comb building of a colony:
Usually, the primary producers of wax in a colony are of middle-age but, in a swarm, older bees that usually forage will regenerate their wax glands in order to make wax for the new nest
The thickness of the layer of cells lining the inner surface of the wax gland in a honey bee correlates to the rate of wax production; in a swarm, both middle-aged and elderly bees have the same rate of production (and thickness of the cell lining)
The energetic cost of wax production is considerable
A typical wild nest will contain approximately 1.2 square-meters/12.9 square-feet of comb; this requires around 1.2kg/2.6lbs of beeswax, which requires 60,000 worker bees (roughly 5 times more than the number of bees in a single swarm)
Producing this amount of beeswax (1.2kg/2.6lbs) requires approximately 7.5kg/16.5lbs of honey, which is ⅓ of the honey needed by a colony to over-winter successfully
When building new comb, honey bees are frugal with their wax use, as evidenced by the shape of the cells: “a right hexagonal prism capped on the inner end by a trihedral pyramid”; more simply, identical cylinders compressed into hexagonal prisms. Basically, if you took multiple cylinders and stacked them, there would be gaps between them, which is wasted space. When you compress them together, forming hexagons, this wasted space is eliminated.
Building comb in this shape requires approximately 52% of the wax needed to build cylindrical cells; a big energy saving.
Worker bees will shave down cell walls to 0.073mm/0.003in thick (using their antennae to assess wall thickness)
Bees will recycle old wax whenever possible; for instance, when a new bee emerges from its cell, the wax cap is not discarded but stuck to the edge of that cell for future use
Comb building is timed by the colony for maximum benefit vs cost. For a swarm, comb building is essential in order to create the cells needed for brood rearing and therefore contribute to (and replace) the workforce of the hive.
A study by PhD student, Stephen C.Pratt, demonstrated that a colony will optimize its comb building by limiting construction of new comb to periods of time when 2 specific requirements are met: 1/ comb is filled beyond a threshold level, 2/ there is adequate nectar flow (and foragers to collect it). Basically, colonies will start building new comb when there is fuel (nectar) available and before they have completely filled their existing comb
How do bees assess comb fullness and nectar intake? Further studies need to be done but Seeley hypothesis that it is related to how long it takes a nectar receiver to find an empty cell to fill. The bees could respond to this difficulty by becoming wax producers in order to create more space. Nectar receivers and wax producers both tend to be middle-aged bees, which gives support to this hypothesis.
Control of Comb Type
A swarm will focus entirely on building worker cells initially, as these are the bees needed to produce more wax, raise the brood, and forage. As a colony becomes established, the larger drone comb can be made as drones are an important part of a colony’s reproduction. Honey is stored in both worker and drone cells for winter.
Seeley asks the question of how the bees decide when to invest in the larger drone cells? How do they regulate the building process to decide what size of cell to create?
One experiment (by Stephen C.Pratt) revealed 3 key discoveries:
Bees require physical contact with existing drone comb to inhibit production of more drone cells
Contact with the queen plays no part in this process
The inhibition of creating more drone comb comes from the drone comb itself, though this inhibition is stronger when the comb contains brood
What does this mean? Primarily, that further, detailed study and analysis of comb building is needed but also that worker bees appear to know what comb to build by interacting directly with completed cells of worker and drone brood, and by interacting with comb that is being actively built.
The Propolis Envelope
Propolis is a key part of nest building in wild colonies. They will line the inner walls, floor, ceiling, and entrance with a thin layer (less than 1mm/0.04in on average) of propolis. In our managed hives, even those used year after year, this application of resin is not seen.
Propolis is made of tree resin, which is collected from newly formed leaf buds (where the resin is a protective coating), as well as from injury sites on trees. Many trees across North America and Europe are suitable for this task, including cottonwood, chestnut, birches, aspen, pine, and spruce to name a few.
A bee collects resin by chewing off a small piece from the tree using her mandibles. She then grasps it with her forelegs, passing it to a midleg, and then placing it in her corbicula (pollen basket). She will fill each corbicula (one on each side of her body) with resin, just as she would when collecting pollen. When she returns to the nest, resin-user bees will bite off pieces of the collected resin while the forager patiently waits. Once all resin has been removed, she will go to find more.
Very little is known about resin collector bees or resin user bees, and there is a dearth of research on the subject. One study conducted by Professor Jun Nakamara from the Honeybee Science Center at Tamagawa University in Japan, attempted to answer some of the many questions about resin collectors in the honey bee colony. Using an observation hive, he added groups of newly hatched (‘zero-day-old’) and labeled bees every 3 to 4 days during May, and tracked their jobs within the hive as they aged. Of these 800 bees, only 10 were resin-users, and all of these bees were of middle-age (so after their work as nurse bees but before becoming foragers). Of those resin collectors in the hive, all were elderly bees (25-38 days old), just as we see with nectar, water, and pollen collectors.
He also found that some resin collectors would also be resin users; going directly to an area that needed working and engaging in caulking behaviour. These bees tended to bring resin back to the hive via their corbiculae and their mouths. Of the 102 resin collectors identified, 67% of them continued to collect resin for the rest of their lives, while the remaining 33% eventually switched to collecting pollen or nectar.
What stimulates resin collectors to continue this task? Little is known about this drive, although a study by researchers at the University of Minnesota discovered that resin collectors have greater abilities to learn via tactile stimulus (touch) than pollen foragers, which could indicate that they are more capable and receptive to the presence of even minute gaps, crevices, and rough services within the nest.
Considering how much work must be done to collect and use resin within the nesting cavity, it must be of great value to the bees, or else it would be nothing more than a huge energy drain. Some studies have shown that propolis functions as an antimicrobial surface that assists in disease prevention. This is discussed in greater detail in Chapter 10 of this book.
Chapter 6: Annual Cycle
Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.
-Robert Frost, “A Prayer in Spring”, 1915
Seeley opens this chapter by comparing honey bees to all other social bees (which includes bumble bees) in how they manage winter survival. The honey bee colony will not enter hibernation as other bees do but instead clusters together, with the queen at the center, and generates heat to survive the cold temperatures outside of the hive. A winter cluster will maintain a temperature of around 10C/50F, even if outside temperatures are as low as -30C/-22F. We can see then, how critical the nesting site is to assisting in this endeavour, as a protective cavity with no icy drafts provides critical insulation. Similarly, a suitable store of honey is also needed to fuel this hard work of maintaining a steady temperature. As stated previously, on average, a colony requires 20kg/45lbs of honey to survive.
Honey bee colonies are unique in that they appear to respond to the lengthening days after the winter solstice by increasing the heat within their cluster to begin brood production. At this time, a temperature of around 35C/95F is maintained. This early brood production means that the colony is sufficiently populated with worker bees when plants begin to bloom and produce nectar in Spring. By the time bumble bee queens begin to emerge in late Spring, a successfully over-wintered honey bee colony will contain approximately 10,000 workers and are starting their reproductive process, which includes drone production and swarming.
This chapter addresses the unique annual cycle of Apis mellifera, as well as the adaptations that have allowed this temperate climate insect to survive much colder climates than where they originally evolved.
Annual Cycle of Energy Intake and Expenditure
Surviving the cold temperatures of winter is energetically expensive, meaning that a honey bee colony must ensure that it has enough honey (the primary food source) stored before winter arrives. We’ve also just discussed how constructing a new nest site and/or new comb is also energy intensive so we can see how a colony’s energy expenditure must rise and fall during the year.
One way to assess the energy expenditure of a colony is through monitoring its weight. Numerous studies, within the US and Europe, have done this but with colonies managed exclusively for honey production. Seeley wanted to assess the potential weight changes of a wild colony and so found that these studies, although useful in some ways, did not apply to his area of research.
He set up a study using 2 unmanaged colonies. Each colony was hived in a double-deep Langstroth (total volume: 84 liters/22.2 gallons), which were mounted on scales. He collected their weight every Sunday from November 1980 until June 1983. Except for twice-monthly brood checks in late spring, summer, and early autumn, neither colony was managed/manipulated in anyway. Seeley notes that the location of these hives was the least natural part of the study, as he housed them close to home in a Botanical Garden surrounded by a residential area. This is important to note since these colonies would have had more forage available to them than those of wild colonies in forested areas. This means that the results of this study are likely an underrepresentation of weight fluctuations of wild colonies.
Unsurprisingly, the results of the study showed that winter is a time of dramatic weight loss for each colony, each losing an average of 23.6kg/52lbs each year between September and April. About 1kg/2.2lbs of this loss consists of the body of dead workers; the rest is entirely honey and pollen stores being used up as food by the bees. Notably, both colonies lost weight the fastest in March, when brood rearing is most intense. During this period, the colonies lost an average of 0.84kg/1.85lbs per week, compared to the average loss of 0.42kg/0.93lbs in December (when the colonies had no brood).
This study also demonstrated that both colonies gained weight for a mere 14 weeks of the year, with 86% of this annual weight gain occurring between April 16th and June 30th; just 75 days! As I type this, it’s July 6th. Considering my area is not so far from where Seeley conducted his study, this makes me wonder if my colonies have reached their peak weight already, and what this might mean for them.
Overall, this study highlights what most beekeepers already know: that winter is an ever-looming, potential crisis for our colonies. It also points to just why so many newly established colonies (from swarm) fail in their first year. With the high energy expenditure necessary for them to find a new nest, fill it with comb, and then store honey and pollen, we can see how they are likely far lower in resources when winter hits than an established colony that did not have to invest so much in wax production.
Of course, for honey bee colonies living in milder climates, this might not present quite as large a challenge to their overall survival. As it stands for colonies in the northern area of Europe and North America, Seeley concludes that “the primary obstacle to their survival is balancing the winter losses and the summer gains in their annual energy budgets”. Pg.146
Annual Cycle of Colony Growth and Reproduction
If 20kgs/44lbs of honey is needed, on average, for a colony to survive the winter then we can deduce that colony growth in the spring and early summer is critical to colony survival, as workers will be needed to forage and, later, to cluster. A colony must time this growth carefully in order to maximize their resources and chance of surviving the oncoming winter.
Colony growth patterns have been previously described in two ways;
Counting the number of filled brood cells in a colony throughout the year
By counting the number of adult bees in the colony at regular intervals throughout the year
To assess the annual cycle of reproduction, one must consider both the male aspects (drones) and female (queens). To do this, you could count the number of drone cells produced throughout the year, as well as the number of queen cells. The latter is a little more tricky, however, as a colony might produce queen cells, only to then tear them down. Seeley posits, therefore, that a more accurate measure of a colony’s reproductive success is by counting the number of swarms it produces in a year.
Through the monitoring of two hives used for this study, Seeley recounts the rise and fall of colony population throughout the year. Data was collected via bimonthly brood counts over a period of 3 years (1980-1983).
Predictably, both colonies were broodless for several months in late autumn and early winter. In January and February, brood rearing began, presumably in response to the increase in daylight hours. Initial census at this time counted a mere 1000 brood cells, though this number increases sharply to as much as 30,000+ per colony in May-June. Usually, swarming will occur at this time, which leaves the colony without brood for a few weeks while the new queen emerges, goes on her mating flights, and then returns. Once the new queen has mated, brood rearing returns to full strength for a few weeks before declining in autumn and eventually ceasing entirely in October.
There are geographical differences in brood-rearing. Just as I can’t plan my hive management around a Southern US state schedule, neither could a Southern state plan their management around my northerly one. This indicates that, although brood rearing is partly controlled by genetics, the local environment of colonies fundamentally affects when brood rearing begins each year, demonstrating a natural adaptation to best survive in their local climate.
Drone production tends to peak in May and June, and declines rapidly by July and August. This peak in drone production usually occurs a few weeks before peak swarming, which makes perfect sense if you consider that more drones means more opportunities for a virgin queen to mate well. Seeley notes that of the 301 swarms collected in or around Ithaca over a 10 year period (1971-1981), 84% occurred between May 15th and July 15th. Swarming this early in the year allows the new/founding colonies more time to build their nests and begin storing for winter. However, only a small amount of these new colonies will survive the winter; about 23-24%, a sharp contrast to the established colonies that have a survival rate of 78-82% per Seeley’s study. Generally speaking, a colony that has survived one winter will have a much higher chance of surviving the next.
In the late 1970s, Seeley worked with Kirk Visscher to examine the survival rates of colonies that swarmed early and late in the season. To do this, they started packages of bees (the closest thing to a swarm) on May 20th and another group on June 30th (these dates chosen due to being 20 days before and after the median date of swarming for their area). Each package/artificial swarm was given a single, 10 frame Langstroth box that held only beeswax foundation, meaning the bees would need to build their own comb as they would in nature. Over 3 of the 4 year experiment, forage was either extremely sparse or extremely abundant. In the abundant period, all colonies survived the winter. During the year of meager forage, all colonies died. For the year of moderate forage, nearly all the early swarms survived while all the late swarms died so we can see how critical the earlier period of swarming can be for a colony. This study also demonstrates how natural selection favours those bees that begin brood rearing in winter, thus allowing them to reach peak population in early Spring in order to swarm (aka reproduce).
The Unique Annual Cycle of Honey Bee Colonies
At the beginning of this chapter, Seeley pointed out how the annual cycle of the honey bee vs bumble bee species are so markedly different. A colony of bumble bees starts with a single queen emerging in Spring after wintering underground. She then rears workers and later males and queens in summer, before the whole colony disintegrates in Autumn, leaving only the young, newly mated queens alive to survive the winter and start their own colony in the spring.
In contrast, honey bees create a warm microclimate within their nest, using the heat of all the workers to maintain a steady temperature, which requires a large amount of food/energy. By storing honey, they give themselves the ability to produce this steady microclimate throughout the cold months of the year. The solution for bumble bees is far simpler; a queen adds anti-freeze materials to her blood and then goes dormant in underground burrows. Interestingly, this method of over-wintering is also more effective. Seeley notes how Bombus polaris, a species of bumble bee, survive in tundra habitat above the Arctic Circle, well past the farthest Northern limit of the honey bee (without beekeeper involvement).
What might have led to this vast difference in over-wintering behaviours? Seeley believes it is due to the ancestral environments of each species. Honey bees hail from warm, tropical environments, whereas bumble bees evolved from cooler, more temperate regions.
Interestingly, the honey bee shares its tropical ancestral home with another highly social bee species: stingless bees. These interesting bees share two fundamental traits with honey bees: multi-year colony lifespan, and reproducing via swarming. Likely, the evolution of social bees is connected to their tropical origins where the need for a single queen to hibernate through an intense winter was not needed (thereby reducing the species to a single year cycle). Seeley states that it is his belief that, when honey bees expanded north and away from more tropical climates, the way in which they could adapt to cold winters was constrained by the complex social organization of its colonies. Apis mellifera did not adapt to a single year cycle with a hibernating queen, nor did it evolve so that the entire colony might go dormant; instead, it used its existing biology to find the most expedient means of surviving the winter. It is Seeley’s hypothesis that Apis mellifera achieved this via adjusting nest-site preferences, refining the mechanisms of thermo-regulation, increasing food storage within the nest, and carefully timing colony growth and reproduction throughout the year.
“In summary, I believe that the unique annual cycle of Apis mellifera as it lives in temperate regions of the world is best understood as being “built on top” of this bee’s original biology as a tropical social insect.” Pg. 154.
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That's it for this episode/post! Thanks for following along. I hope you're finding this interesting and perhaps even of use. Feel free to leave me a comment here or on social media, or email me directly at homesteadhensandhoney@gmail.com
I always love to hear from you!
It's still scary out there so please be safe, wear a mask in public, and take time for yourself and self-care. I'll leave you with this picture of my Kaylee looking adorable in the hopes it will boost your spirits!
