The Honey Bee New Year

Our calendar declares the New Year starts on January 1. We also declare that today, December 21, is the first day of winter. Taking the earth one year to circle the sun, our planet spins on an axis that is slightly tilted. The tilt of the earth’s axis causes the days to lengthen and shorten throughout the year as the sun strikes larger portions of the Southern, and then, Northern Hemispheres. These changes throughout the year give us our seasons. A number of species, including the honey bee, are sensitive to the changes in the length of days. They time life activities, including reproduction, according to changes in daylight. Our seasons change on days we call the solstices and equinoxes. The honey bee colony’s year seems to begin on the winter solstice, the day that marks the shortest amount of daylight and the longest night.

Here in the Mid-South, honey bees are clustered together in their hives for warmth. Worker bees forced their queens to stop laying eggs a number of weeks ago by restricting her food. The winter interruption in reproduction is a survival strategy that allows honey bees to conserve precious food stores over prolonged winters. Honey bee colonies maintain an internal hive temperature around 95 degrees Fahrenheit whenever there is brood in the hive. However, the bees conserve energy by allowing the hive to cool to around 70 degrees if there is no brood present. Just as we can conserve energy required to warm our homes in the winter by turning down the thermostat, bees conserve honey stores by lowering their hive temperature. Queen bees often begin laying a few eggs after the winter solstice. Though winter is just beginning, for the bees, this is the New Year. People throughout history have observed the relative movements of the earth, sun, moon, stars, and planets. Earlier this month, the moon aligned with the earth and sun to provide a colorful lunar eclipse with the moon setting at dawn.

--Richard

Survival Strategies

Six inches of rain fell during two days of steady showers leaving considerable surface flooding across the flat Arkansas Delta. Broad fields, harvested recently, became shallow lakes. The North wind blew crop debris of twigs, stems, and leaves to form long bands of floating vegetative matter. Numerous dinner plate sized masses of fire ants floated on these rafts of ground-up soybean plants shown in today’s photo. Fire ant colonies, which live underground, were being transported to dry ground on floating crop debris. Not only were the fire ants being saved from drowning by their huddling on floating matter, they were also expanding their range across open fields.

Honey bees expand their range through swarming, usually in the spring but to a lesser extent in the summer and fall. When the bees swarm, the colony divides; half of the bees stay behind, and half of the bees fly away. Sometimes all of the bees in a colony abandon their hive and fly away in a move called “absconding.” Bees will abandon their hive if the nest gets badly damaged, as when flooded or overrun and “slimed” by small hive beetles. At times, bees abscond during times of extreme dearth. Honey bees in the tropics tend to abscond more often than bees in more temperate areas. Tropical bees don’t have the need to store great amounts of honey to survive the winter. Seasonal changes in tropical nectar and pollen flows vary with rain and drought. During a dearth of nectar, tropical bees will abscond and move to areas where flowers are blooming. Honey bees in temperate areas survive by hoarding honey to provide food and energy for the winter. Each of these behaviors by ants or bees illustrates a heritable survival strategy which allows the insects to survive in a changing environment. Two studies hint at the mechanisms for the inheritance of survival traits: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111205102713.htm#.Tt7BaeNFBZY.email looks at methods of fighting viruses, and http://www.livescience.com/7655-lizards-dance-avoids-deadly-ants.html reveals how lizards learn to avoid fire ants.

--Richard