Honey bees are so amazing and here is one more skill we can add to their resume: HUGGING!! Yep! Hugging!
"Bees do have a smell, you know, and if they don't they should, for their feet are dusted with spices from a million flowers." - Ray Bradbury
Before we talk about their amazing hugging ability, we need to do a little background info on honey bees. There are two sets of worker bees: those that live in the warmer summer months and those that live in the colder winter months. The warm-weather bees live for only about 4-6 weeks, a short span of time due to their extremely busy lifestyle of gathering pollen and nectar. The cold-weather bees live a much-longer life of 3-5 months. Their lives are a bit easier, hence longer life span.
The cold-weather bees' sole purpose is to make sure the queen honey bee survives the winter months so she can lay eggs at the end of winter. (This is where the hugging part comes in, which we will cover in just a bit.) These eggs ensure the continuation of the colony. The winter bees will die off and the new eggs will become the warm-weather workers who will gather nectar in the coming warm months. The cycle repeats itself yearly.
The bees prepare for winter by building up large supplies of honey. The winter bees, who were born in the fall, become fat bees as they will eat lots of honey in order to survive the winter and to be able to stay active.
Now this is where the hugging comes in . . .
The queen bee needs to stay very warm to make it through the cold months and lay eggs at the end of winter. So all during the cold months, the bees "hug" the queen to keep her warm. They cluster around her in a huge snuggle hug. She is in the very center of this cluster of hugging bees where it is a very toasty 90 degrees or higher. All the bees surrounding her shiver and flex their flight muscles continuously. This movement creates an amazing amount of heat to keep her highness warm and alive, in addition to keeping the bees warm and alive also.
In case you are concerned about all the bees on the outside of the cluster, don't bee. (Ha! I couldn't resist a goofy pun!) These outer worker bees are always moving from the outside to the inside of the cluster so they can warm up. Furthermore, the cluster moves around the hive to continue their eating of honey so they do not starve and to keep up their energy for their hug-shivering, warmth-generating duties. During all this time, the queen is kept in the center of the giant group hug and kept warm and "snug as a bug." The bees will also adjust the tightness of the cluster hug and how close they are to each other relative to how cold it is outside of the hive. The colder it gets, the tighter they hug up to each other.
Here is one more very interesting piece of trivia. Do the bees go to the bathroom inside the hive during these cold months? That seems a bit unsanitary. No worries. They are very clean! On warm winter days, they will take breaks from their hugging and snuggling and go outside to defecate. These are called "cleansing flights." On these mild days it is easier to keep the clustering bees and the queen warmer, so they don't have to hug so tightly. They can finally go out and take care of business and the hive has stayed clean and tidy.
So it appears honey bees are tidy huggers who are truly dedicated to their queen!
Source for all of this amazing info:
Perfect Bee website, www.perfectbee.com, Fat Bees and the Winter Cluster, Nov. 21, 2018
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