>Can't be temperature, bees are much better aircraft than that.

>Hard for the ambient temperature to fall quickly enough to stop flying bees
from making it the last few feet to the entrance.

Ten days after starting to keep bees I moved my two precious hives to a
field of rape.  I placed them on my newly made wooden stand (so that they
were about a foot off the ground) on the hard standing around the disused
farm buildings.

When I returned next day it was cold  - and there were large numbers of dead
bees on the concrete below the entrance; many had pollen loads.  I was
horrified and immediate set about collecting a sample for analysis in a
large ice-cream tub.  Then it started raining and I got back into the car
putting the container with the bees on the passenger seat.

Ten minutes later the sun came out again and shone on the tub and, miracle
of miracles, the bees came back to life!

Had I left the bees on the ground and the sun not shone I am sure that they
would have been really dead - chilled within a foot of their entrance.

After that experience, I knew why a more experienced beekeeper had put his
hives in the edge of the crop at ground level.

Best wishes

Peter
52°14'44.44"N, 1°50'35"W

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