NOLAN (1925) has provided a good record of the quantities of brood in honeybee
colonies during the summer months, but the position over winter, though fundamentally
no less interesting, has been far less certainly investigated. This has been the result
of the very strong tradition that bees should be left strictly alone during the winter-- a
tradition which, with discretion and common sense, may be broken much more freely
than is usually imagined.

The figures in Table 1 show that at Aberdeen the quantity of brood
in the months when bees are wintering drops to a minimum in October
and November. In October only one in seven of the colonies examined
had brood. In November the ratio had risen to one in four, and in
December and January brood was present at half of the examinations.

In February and March, twelve colonies out of every 13 had some brood.
Table 2 suggests that some colonies (as Colony B) may have had brood
throughout the winter, others (as Colony D) had some intermittently,
while others (Colonies C, O and F) may have had just one fairly long
broodless interval, persisting in breeding once they had started again.

These results coincide fairly closely with
Wedmore's idea of a period of quiescence followed by brood-rearing
as soon as colder conditions set in; but nevertheless attempts in this
laboratory to correlate the amount of brood in individual winter months
with temperature fluctuations have not so far been successful.

WINTER BROOD AND POLLEN IN HONEYBEE COLONIES
by EdWard P. JEFFREE, B. Sc. (Bee Besearch Department, North of Scotland College of Agriculture, Marlschal College, Aberdeen.)
INSECTES SOCIAUX, TOME III, No 3, 1956. page 28

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