Another Observation


“For years,” Lloyd posits, “the assumption was that the bees rotated
positions so those on the outside could get warm.  In the past several
years it has been discovered that the bees pretty much stay where they
start.  Imagine, in these frigid climates that an animal as small as a bee
can survive for 4 months or longer at just above freezing, with nothing to
eat (only those on the inner layers below the 'crust' eat and shiver to
create heat).  Shows how much we have to learn about bees and how they
survive.”

The rotation hypothesis, assuming it is indeed a hogwash now, may have
been derived/deduced from observing other creatures in a similar
environment, such as penguins in the Antarctica: they do rotate, doing
a “Texas tush-push to the tune of Cotton-Eye Joe,” to windbreak against
the onslaught of the ocean-blasting chill.  Also certain Siberian frogs,
it is well-documented, would freeze their body only to thaw come spring,
like magic, a naturally-occurring death and resurrection feat humans now
attempt to achieve while, so far, swindling the wet-behind-the-ears.

Well over a decade ago, during my salad days of bee-having, I found in
March a colony dead of starvation: a fistful of bees frozen-stuck in the
upper comb, forming the classical half-moon.  Thinking I needed to clean
up the mess, I banged the frame against the hive and dislodged the bees.
The unpredictable spring weather was still chilly, one of those cold days
when you don’t even need any protection, and the bees on the ground looked
dead, immobile; however, I found out, as the temperature got up later in
the afternoon, that they had not been completely dead: they seemed to
crawl ever so slightly on the ground as the sun warmed up their reptilian
circulation.  Later they, the queen and all, disappeared into the outback
of Oklahoma.  Sure, bees may not hibernate, but they were, according to my
limited observation then, in some sort of stupor—-lethargic and immobile—-
at the point of near death.  Yet they lingered their demise, now worsened
by the all-knowing beehaver.  I also hear anecdotes as to how a frozen
bee, found outside in winter, will come back to life, once brought in
indoors, reminding me of many similar cases involving humans, particularly
the one about a stranded infant in freezing cold that made news.  The
Russian medical community, I gather, has been taking advantage of this
open secret: a really dead person is a warm dead, not frozen dead.
Something is going on here.  Living in Oklahoma, I prefer cold weather in
winter so that my bees would not consume as much; sometimes I had to feed
them in the dead winter, which is really weird, yet not uncommon.  It
matters little as to how much I have left for them: I keep them in two
deeps.  Winter is supposed to be cold, but not any more, it seems.

Yoon

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