More than Honey

At this time of the year, bees are preparing for winter, the period of scarcity. No flowers, no nectar, no pollen, no brood. They have to live on what they have collected over the summer and if it’s not enough, the entire colony will die.

As with everything else, the bees are well adapted to deal with this; and – naturally – not very squeamish about their means. They raise long lived workers who will be heating the hive during the winter. And they will adjust the number of individuals according to the food supply by producing less brood and by throwing out expendable members of the hive – the old, the sick, and the male.

(Foto credit)

It makes sense. There is no mating going on, because it is too cold and there are no queens flying. The drones do not contribute to the survival of the colony during winter and wouldn’t live through to the end of winter anyway. And since they are raised from unfertilized eggs, they can easily be produced from scratch in the new season. Nature has it all worked out.

And still: We filmed some drone evictions last week in Austria and when you see them being pushed out of the hive and off the landing board by the guard bees it’s kind of hard not to feel sorry for them. The anthropocentric trap, I guess…

Astacus over at Bienenforum posted some beautiful pictures of the eviction and the fate of a homeless drone last year (the second link requires registration, sorry).