In this experiment Tom Seeley and Kirk Visscher tested the effect of preventing colonies from producing brood in winter. They did this by confining the queen to a large queen excluder cage between two supers. The one group started breeding in winter while the experimental group had no brood until April. The restricted brood group built up later, swarmed later and had a higher rate of winter fatality. So you can see that natural selection would favor colonies that start breeding in the beginning of winter, to have a large population when spring comes. It may be that there is no cue at all; that the colonies that wait for a "cue" are unable to grow enough to survive and/or cast swarms. The late bloomers would thereby be deselected and the "jump the gun" bees would predominate.

¶

In the end, we may view the
honeybee's winter survival technique, with its
intricate intertwining of home-site selection,
heat production, food storage, and regulation
of colony growth and reproduction, as a complicated
and cumbersome solution to the problem
of winter survival, but one which is
fascinating for its uniqueness and richness of adaptation.

THOMAS D. SEELEY and P. KIRK VISSCHER
Survival of honeybees in cold climates: the critical timing of colony growth and reproduction
Ecological Entomology (1985) 10, 81-88

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