How Honeybees Survive Winter?

How honeybees survive winter, do they hibernate, migrate to warmer climates or do something else? We know that these amazing insects have a specific order of living, which they follow in winter too. They are preparing for living through the cold periods actively.

There are several facts on how honeybees survive winter:

They create a beehive “heater” by clustering

If we go back to the very first question of this article, we have to give a negative answer to it. NO – honeybees do not hibernate and they do not migrate to warmer climates. On the contrary, they are gathered together in a cluster. This way, they help themselves to stay warm in the hive and not freeze. The cluster represents a big knot of bees.

Honeybees create these clusters around to their produced honey so that they have enough food close by. Besides around food, the cluster is formed around the queen too. In doing so, honeybees are protecting their queen from freezing. Without her, the colony will die. The formation of the cluster is once again incredibly intelligently formed. The oldest bees stay on the outside of the cluster, so they can fall off whenever they die. The younger bees stay inside the warmer core of the cluster. There, in the core, the temperature is assessed to be from 92 to 94 degrees Fahrenheit.

Additionally, one interesting thing to mention is that honeybees keep this temperature all year long, no matter the temperatures. In summer, honeybees flap their wings very fast and make sure the hive is cool and maintained at that temperature.

Only female bees remain in the hive

As much as this sounds unbelievable – only female bees make the before-mentioned cluster. Drones do not remain in the hive during the winter. In order to keep what honeybees have stored, they must reduce the hive population. Because of this, during the fall season, the beehive is getting rid of drones. Since the only purpose of drones is to mate with the queen, during winter they are not so helpful. In winter, the queen does not lay eggs and it does not need the drones. As a result, female worker bees force drones out of the beehive during fall and remove any drone eggs. This way they are preventing the birth of new drones. Once spring arrives, female worker bees let some stored male eggs hatch and they acquire new drones.

The difference between summer and winter honeybees

The difference between them is that summer honeybees live shorter than winter honeybees. Summer honeybees have a lot of work to do; therefore, they live only from three to six weeks. Unlike them, winter honeybees live up to six months.

Summer honeybees go in and out of the hive multiple times, whereas winter honeybees stay inside and keep the hive warm. Winter honeybees leave the hive only if the temperatures rise to 55 degrees Fahrenheit. These are the cleansing flights for bees.