Why do so many bees freeze to death in winter?

Hello, the death of bees caused by the temperature difference effect.

In winter, the outside temperature is low, and the bees will basically not go to work, but once the outside heats up, there will be bees going out to collect honey, and after going out, a gust of north wind suddenly comes, or the temperature drops suddenly, the bees will lie there and not move, enter the "hibernation" mode, and finally die in its "hibernation" position; However, if the temperature rises the next day, some bees may still be rescued, which is why we often see bees at the door of the nest "returning to the sun" the next day.

The phenomenon of bee death caused by the temperature difference effect is not only the phenomenon of dead bees at the door of the hive, we often see dead bees on the honey source.

These are caused by sudden changes in temperature, and we generally take two attitudes to deal with this phenomenon:

Go with the flow; If you want to collect winter honey, it is normal to pay a price.

The most common way to interfere with and hinder bees from going out is to close the nest door; Only after reading the weather forecast to make sure that there is no sudden change in weather throughout the day do you release the bees.

Second, the reason for the lack of resistance of the bees themselves.

There are more bees in the strong colony and few bees in the weak colony.

The probability of death of the Italian bee is high, and the probability of the middle bee is less.

The reason for this law is that listening to the words of bees summarizes the problem of the bee's own resistance:

The weak bees have basically experienced the test of survival, so the damned bees are all dead, and the bees that remain and do not die are all in good health. The strong swarm has not undergone the "baptism" of the elimination mechanism, so there will be "old" and "weak" worker bees inside, and these bees have poor ability to cope with the external environment in winter, so it is more common for bees to go out to collect honey and die on the honey source and at the door of the nest.

The cold resistance of the Italian bee itself is worse than that of the medium bee, so the loss of honey collection in winter will be very large. There are many more bees that die at the door of the nest and outside than the bees in the middle bees. Migrate away from the colony and return after a while.

The bees should not have been given enough pollen and honey, resulting in a lack of food, or not doing a good job of shading, and the temperature rises before the bees come out.

A single bee will freeze to death at a temperature of minus 20 degrees. However, the critical temperature of bees varies depending on the bee species, and the individual will freeze to death when the temperature is below 12. The individuals who are separated from the group will be frozen to death when the temperature is lower than 6, but it is impossible for either the middle bee or the Italian bee to survive in the environment of minus 20 degrees.

The optimal temperature for bees to overwinter is -2 8, when the temperature is lower than -2 for a long time, the bee colony must eat honey to produce heat to maintain the temperature of the bee group, and if the temperature is higher than 8 for a long time, the bee colony is easy to disperse in advance and go out of the nest.

A brief introduction to other conditions of bees. In general, the temperature in the beehive will be 5 to 10 degrees Celsius warmer than the air temperature. When the temperature drops below 4 degrees Celsius, the bee colony gathers together to cope with the temperature change.

When the temperature of the bee colony is too low, the bees can eat enough honey to maintain the basic hive temperature to ensure that they will not freeze, and can ingest honey normally, so as not to freeze and starve. In this way, honey will definitely be consumed at low temperatures, which will damage the physical fitness of bees and shorten their lifespan.

Bees don't freeze to death in winter.

In order for bees to survive in winter, they must first have something to eat, so bees prepare honey in advance and store it in their hives as winter food. Bees are not homeothermic animals, so the slag quietly says that it is very sensitive to changes in the surrounding environment, and the winter environment is very unfavorable to the survival of bees, but the hive provides a shelter and warm place for bees.

When the weather is cold, the bees in the hive will also huddle together, by increasing the density to maintain the temperature in the hive constant, even in the cold time, the temperature in the hive can reach 24 degrees to 26 degrees, which greatly improves the survival rate of bees.

In winter, bees can maintain their body temperature by exercising more and eating more honey, generally speaking, the temperature outside the ball is lower than the temperature inside the ball, so the bees will constantly switch positions in the hive, so that all the bees can get warm.

1. The reasons for the mass death of bees in winter.

First: natural death. Natural death is the normal death of bees, but generally even if it is wintering, the mortality rate of bees is maintained at a normal level, although it is a normal death, but if the number is huge, it has a lot to do with the management of beekeepers, that is, a normal wintering bee colony, even if there is a large number of deaths in winter, the chance is not large.

Second: cold death. This situation is easy to appear in some small and medium-sized groups, due to the small number of bees and the lack of experience of beekeepers, resulting in cold death of bees.

Third: death from heat. It is a fact that bees are afraid of cold in winter, but bees are also prone to heat injury and suffocation of bees due to excessive heat preservation in winter.

Fourth: starvation. This situation is more common, mainly reflected in the beekeeper does not have a reasonable plan for bee overwintering, resulting in insufficient feed for bees in the late wintering stage, and beekeepers have no experience and neglect management, resulting in the death of the whole group of bees.

In the view of the bee tribe, if a large number of bees die in winter, the most likely reasons are inseparable from the above four, although there are bees in the winter dysentery, rodent infestation, etc., but these are generally not easy to cause a large number of bee death, the development is relatively slow, beekeepers can find that often heat death, suffocation, starvation of these phenomena are easy to be ignored by beekeepers.