a randy Oliver snip followed by > my comment... 

I have spent countless hours trying to figure out why that is.  I've
analyzed absolute daylength, daylength change, temperature, and wind speed,
but none appear to account for the difference.  I suspect that it may
simply be a function of more abundant forage.  The nagging question is that
the act of foraging quickly wears the foragers out, thus reducing their
longevity, so I haven't yet worked that out.

> pre varroa (mid 1980's) we use to notice this between hives reared in Texas (that stayed in Texas) and hive taken to North Dakota.  As in many thing biological why not all of these??

> At the time we though that the primary factors in this difference (the bees were basically all of the same stock) was day length and a constant vs a punctuated nectar flow.

> Reflecting backwards there was also a difference in the average age of the queens in the boxes at the two location... ie the one's going north tending to be younger and those that stayed south older.

Gene in Central Texas..  

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html