How Do Wild Bees Spend the Winter? A Detailed Explanation of Overwintering Methods

Winter is the most difficult time for keeping honeybees; a moment of carelessness can lead to death from factors such as temperature and lack of honey, and the same is true for wild honey. So how do wild bees spend the winter?

1. Storing food

Bees are constantly busy during the season when plants bloom, continuously collecting nectar and pollen. Part of this nectar and pollen is consumed as food, and another part is brewed by the colony into honey and stored. This stored honey is the bees' magic weapon against winter. Under normal circumstances, the honey stored by most colonies is enough to get through the winter, while those weak colonies or colonies with poor collecting ability are naturally eliminated.

2. Raising new bees

Every year during the last major honey flow period, bees have a rapid breeding period, the purpose of which is to raise enough worker bees of the right age for overwintering in preparation for winter. In ordinary seasons, worker bees live for 30 to 40 days, and during the honey flow period even only 28 days. However, the overwintering worker bees raised by the colony in late autumn and early winter have only carried out flight excretion and have not participated in labor, so their lifespan is relatively much longer, with the longest lifespan reaching about 6 months.

3. Clustering to overwinter

Honeybees can regulate colony temperature by clustering and fanning their wings. In winter, when the nest temperature drops below 10°C, the colony moves close together and forms a spherical bee cluster. At the coldest times, the temperature inside the cluster can still be maintained at around 24°C, and bees generate heat by eating honey and moving to raise the temperature inside the cluster. At this time, the queen bee is the key object of protection for the colony and is generally located at the center of the cluster, while the worker bees on the outside take turns swapping positions.

4. Breaking up the cluster and starting to breed

Early spring is the last hurdle for the colony's overwintering. At this time, the stored honey has basically been used up and the end of the overwintering worker bees' lifespan is getting closer, and the entire colony has reached the end of its strength. Afterward, as the temperature gradually rises and becomes stable, the queen bee gradually begins to lay eggs, the overwintering worker bees break up the cluster and fly outside on sunny days to excrete, and when nectar sources begin to flow in the outside world, the worker bees leave the hive to collect, and the entire colony safely gets through the winter.