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Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology

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Subject:
From:
Jerry J Bromenshenk <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Discussion of Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Mon, 4 Apr 1994 08:29:24 -0600
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Jane:
I truly doubt that your bees froze to death.  Southwick has taken them to
incredible cold and they survive if the cluster is large enough and they
have enough food.  It appears that unless the cluster is really small,
bees can survive really cold conditions by 1) clustering tightly (which
we all learned from the classical texts, 2) consuming lots of high energy
food and increasing their heat output, and 3) (here is the new angle)
moving over against an empty frame (if the beekeeper was smart enought to
leave one).  Seems bees figured out the insulation properties of dead air
spaces long before we wised up.
 
So -- they not only invented the swamp cooler, they also insulated their
outer walls.  However, most of us thought they were just stubborn and
uncooperative about filling out those outer frames, and  -- many of us
than helped them out by putting a full frame of honey there.  Dumb!
 
Actually, in winter, the best guess is that colonies more often starve to
death (even with food in the box) because they either run out of food or
can't break the cluster to move sideways to frames that have remaining
food stores.
 
I went round and round on this one with a programmer who wanted our model
to kill bees by freezing them.  He had a neat looking approach, but it
didn't have any meaning in terms of reality.
 
Cheers
 
Jerry Bromenshenk
The University of Montana
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