>How do the nurse bees know it is time to start feeding the queen more so
she will lay eggs again?

This is a very interesting question, Dave.  And one that I've asked most
major bee behavioral scientists over the last few weeks (as I'm currently
writing an article on that very subject!).

The short answer: no one really knows, but it is clearly not solely due to
the lengthening days.

Luckily, I recently met a scientist, Lloyd Harris, who marked hundreds of
thousands of bees, and took thousands of brood measurements, over the course
of a couple of years in Canada back in the early '80's.  He has only
recently found time to publish the results in JAR (some of his data was
mined and published by Drs Heather Mattila and Gard Otis), and he has
another paper in prep.

Contrary to popular belief, it is very common for a colony to rear brood
from December on, even when quite cold outside, or even if the hive is
stored in total darkness and at constant temperature.

Dr Otis published a paper years ago with mathematical calculations
suggesting that bees initiated winter broodrearing to create free water in
the cluster.  I haven't seen any replication or confirmation of that
hypothesis.

Lloyd Harris feels that the age of the queen and temperature are important
factors.  He suspects that bees may sense temperature fluctuations in the
hive due to solar radiation (Mike Palmer--this may help to explain the
benefit of your dark wraps).

Anyway, I am currently field testing a hypothesis of mine that a certain
pheromone is involved--I should have results in a few weeks.

It was surprising to me that such an obvious question has not been more
thoroughly investigated by the bee research community!

Randy Oliver

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