Honeybee created air conditioning.

Bee bearding is a hive phenomena that is often observed during the warmer summer months. The temperature inside the hive around the brood nest needs to be kept between 92 and 95 degrees Fahrenheit.  This is accomplished during the hot summer months in a most ingenious way.

Workers that would normally contribute their body’s warmth to the brood area in order to help maintain ideal temperature during cooler periods leave the hive and hang around on the outside. Foraging bees bring in water droplets and deposit then around the inside of the hive. Other workers inside and outside the hive create airflow by fanning their wings. This airflow causes the water droplets to evaporate, thereby cooling the hive. Voila – bee created air conditioning! This is simply amazing.

It has been hot for us the past few days. Ambient temperatures have been around 82 to 85 degrees. It's been warmer in the hive. Here is a short video of bee bearding on our hive. There are bees hanging around on the side panel. Many of the bees on the landing board are fanning their wings in order to help create airflow.

Drought and Drone Expulsion

It is late July and we here in California have been in the midst of a severe drought. It is so severe that the State has said that anyone hosing down their driveway to keep it clean, using their hose for any purpose without a nozzle that can turn the flow off, and other wasteful water practices are liable to a $500 fine. Local parks are not watering their grounds and have posted signs that read "Brown is the new green." With less watering of gardens and parks in municipal areas, there must be a lack of forage.

I have wondered how this has been affecting the bees in our hive. They still go out and forage everyday, but their building of comb has slowed way done. They also seem to be a bit mean.

We came back from 10 days of vacation on Monday. I checked the hive out on Tuesday and noticed a few drones on the ground in front of the landing board. No workers, just six or seven drones. They couldn't fly and were being attacked by ants. I rescued one, cleaned him off, and put him on the landing board where he was immediately attacked and thrown to the ground. I went out and checked the hive later that night and noticed 5 pupae that had been removed from their cells and were discarded as well.

All of this points to the probability that their is not enough stores in the hive to support all it's members. Drones are being unceremoniously expelled from the hive for it's survival. All drones do is eat and try to mate with virgin queens. They are being dumped as they do not collect nectar or pollen, or provide any other useful task for the hive.

Here is a YouTube link to a video of what I've observed. The file was to large to post here.The first part highlights the orientation flights of young honeybees.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DBo1DzLgDg

Something new

The door bell rang yesterday afternoon. It was my neighbor, Carol. “Rich, I think there’s something wrong with your bees”, she said. “There’s a big cloud of them  flying all around the hive, more than I ever saw before. It doesn’t look normal. Maybe something bothered them? Maybe a raccoon?”

I went out to check on the hive, and sure enough, Carol was right. I thought they might be getting ready to swarm. A swarm is when half of the bees and the queen leave to establish a new hive. Bees do this when there is no more room in the hive for more bees.

Or, maybe a summer swarm from another hive was trying take over this one.  Maybe, just maybe, I had a huge aerial bee battle going on. Sort of like a bee version of ‘the Battle of Britain’. I got on my knees to see if there were any dead or dying bees on the ground in front of the hive. I checked the landing board to see if there were any bees locked in mortal combat. Nope. Nada. What I had was a heck of a lot of bees flying all around the front of the hive. I did next what any self respecting junior bee keeper would do. I turned to Google.

I found out that what I was observing was the orientation flight of three-week old bees. Workers do not fly right after leaving their wax cells. They spend about three week doing jobs inside the hive. Then, like clock work, they take their first foray into the world outside the hive. They fly around in greater and greater circles, facing the hive to get their bearings. They will remember this when they go out to forage for nectar and pollen. How else would they know how to get home?

To quote Mark Wilson’s The Biology of the Honey Bee,

A single orientation flight generally lasts less than 5 minutes, and successive flights appear to increase in duration and distance from the colony. Remarkably, the stem length of certain brain interneurons shorten during the first flight, perhaps preparing the worker's nervous system to record and remember orientation stimuli...

There we go, orientation flights! Just another interesting fact from the world of the honeybee. Here is link to a video I tried to include here. It wouldn't post. The video below the link is one that did post. Happy viewing.

Orientation Flight

I gotta clear out that stuff in the back corner of my backyard! :-)