Many seem to doubt if the of day lengt has any effect to bees.
In Apimondia in Montpellier 2009 I was listening for a talk by frensh
engineer who was a hobby beekeeper. He had set up a system to record the voices
of beehive. Or actualy just the vibrations that the noices caused to the hive
walls, this way his microphone did not get wax / propolis on it.
One of his findings was thet every morning there was a noticeable , special
buzz in the hive for about 3 minutes. After little thinking he noticed that the
time of the buzz changed daily by about a minute and quite soon he realized
that it happened just when sun come up. This also happened in cloudy days when
no sun was visible by human eyes.
In my eyes quite a good proof that at least the bees note carefully when the
sun comes up.
Ari Seppälä
Finland
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