Two of the recent comments in this thread remind me that brood timing is all about food.  Too early, there's not enough to eat and you all starve.  Too late, your neighbors get all the best sites and maybe you don't starve but you don't thrive and you probably don't pass along your genes.

Plants do NOT, however, primarily respond to photoperiod, though there is a correlation.  The stronger correlation to bloom date is growing-degree-days.  In other words, keep it cold enough and it doesn't matter if the sun shines 24 hours a day - the plant won't grow.

Is it possible that the bees are directly sensing some sort of cumulative measure of temperature-time?  We tend to think that the bees couldn't sense that because any signal would be overwhelmed by their own ability to thermoregulate but is that a warm-blooded bias?  Has anyone looked directly for a correlation between brood rearing and cumulative temperature measures?

Mike Rossander (in NE Ohio)



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