Where do honeybees go in winter?
- Meghan McMahon
- 4 days ago
- 4 min read
Ever since the first hunter-gatherers sat beside a buzzing log and got a whiff of a sweet honey coming from within, humans have been managing and keeping honeybees.
The honeybee got its common name from its scientific name, which is Apis mellifera. In Latin, Apis means “bee,” and mellifera means “honey-bearing.”
Who’s in the hive?
A beehive consists of three types of bees: queens, workers and drones. The first and most important is the queen. There can only be one queen in each hive. The queen regulates the hive and spends her days depositing eggs and doing little else.
She only leaves the hive one time, to go on her mating flight. Then she returns to the hive to live in darkness and perform her duty to the hive. She also makes sure that the other bees are on their best behavior by releasing pheromones that prompt them to tend to certain activities.
That leads us to the worker bees. The worker bees are all female, and they are hard workers. Different worker bees have different responsibilities. They do all the housework in the hive.
Words to know
Deplete: To use up the supply or resources of.
Hunter-gatherer: Nomadic people who lived by hunting, fishing and harvesting wild food.
Pheromone: A chemical substance produced and released into the environment by an animal.
Regulate: To control or maintain the rate of speed of something.
Secrete: To produce and discharge.
Worker bees include nurses, which take care of the young, and queen attendants, which groom and feed the queen. Some have hive-cleaning duties, removing dead bees and dirt. Some are builders, secreting wax from glands and turning it into honeycomb. Some repair cracks and holes in the hive.
The guard bees do just that — guard the entrance to the hive and don’t let any other bees or enemies in. And then there are the foragers. They are the ones out in the field, bringing in nectar, pollen and water.
The male bees are called drones. Their only job is to mate with the queen. If they get lucky enough to mate with her, they instantly die. The other drones will spend the summer in the hive, laying around doing no work, not even taking care of themselves. The worker bees will feed and groom them until the frost. Then they get kicked out of the hive and are not allowed back in. Food is scarce in the winter, and the queen will produce new drones for the next summer.
It’s getting cold out!
What do they do in the winter? They cluster together for warmth. With the queen in the middle of the cluster, the rest of the bees will form an oval shape around her. The cluster will slowly rotate so the bees in the center move outward and the ones on the outside get a chance to be in the warm, toasty center.
They will cluster near the honey frames where they store the honey in the summer. Bees are very clean animals, and they will not defecate (poop) in their hive. If the temperature rises to at least 50 degrees, they will all buzz outside for what is called a cleansing flight.
Have you ever seen snow around a hive dotted with yellow and brown spots? Do you know what these spots are? You guessed it — it’s bee poop! It consists of undigested pollen grains and fat, along with other waste.
The bees can’t break their cluster until it warms up, so sometimes it’s a long wait for a potty break. They will hold it until it is warm enough to fly, which could be several months. Imagine that!
When the days start getting longer and tree sap starts to flow, the queen again becomes active with egg laying. It’s critical for the bees to be able to find early-blooming fruit trees and wildflowers.
By this time, they have almost depleted the winter storage of honey, but the hive is growing with young. As soon as it is warm enough, the forager bees will go out and look for nectar and pollen to feed their growing family.
If their food sources have been treated with chemicals, the bees will bring those poisons back into the hive too. This could weaken and maybe even kill the colony. This is why planting native wildflowers and trees and not using herbicides and pesticides is so important. Those dandelions and wildflowers are so full of nutrition! The flowers and trees in your own yard can make a big difference in the life of a honeybee.
Have you ever wondered if beekeepers get stung? The answer is yes. Honeybees are normally not aggressive, but they will protect themselves and defend their colony from threats. Most of the time they are busy as bees and have no objection to you quietly watching them from afar.