From: Michael Palmer
>
> How would that effect the nurse bee population? They don't go out to forage.
>


Yes they do. Bees start as field bees at some point of their life. Seeleys book honeybee ecology page 33 for example has a graph that shows how the proportion of field bees grow. Some bees start as field bees at age of 10 days. Normally at day 25 100 % of bees are working outside of the hive.

So bees have ability to start as field bees quite early in their life, at the time that they are normally feeding brood.

When a sudden strong honey flow starts many bees are moving to honey related jobs. Up to a point where brood gets less food than normal. This in the mechanism why european foulbrood often shows up 1 week after the beginning of good honeyflow. In that case larvae show symptoms because they don't receive enough food and the bacteria in their stomach eats most of it and the larvae dies. When properly fed many larvae would survive. But they come out in that case as smaller bees.

This change also effects queen rearing.

It is quite logical that bees can adjust their work according to the situation. A good honeyflow does not happen too often. They need to take every advantage of it.

Ari Seppälä
Central Finland where honeyflows are often strong, but short. This year looks like 14 good days.

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