Do Bees Keep Their Cool

[beek4018]

I went and checked on my hive today.  All was good.

However, I noticed that the girls seemed unusually calm and docile today.

It was about 5-10 degrees cooler today than it has been for the last few weeks.

Are bees' moods affected by the temperature, and is a change that small enough to make the difference?

The drop in temp as from roughly 93 to 85.

thanks.

-Glenn

[beek4018]

Just bumping this back up the list.

I'd love anybody's input.

[AliciaH]

It's a good question, but there are so many variables.  I, too, would like to know what others think.

I do think temperature is an issue, but I haven't tracked it enough with my hives to notice a distinct pattern.  Is it just the temperature alone, or is it that the high temps put a premium on resources and the bees get more defensive because of that?  Kind of hard to separate those two things.

Last year we had a really good run of hot weather.  My bees all had food stores but were really tempermental; chasing us back to the house, etc.  I put out a sprinkler for closer water access because all the ditches had dried up and that seemed to take care of the issue.  So do bees get cranky when they get dehydrated like we do?  Again, I don't know.

All I do know is that at this time of year I can't seem to predict which hives will be cranky and which ones won't.  I've got out without a suit to peek in a hive that, until that visit, had been complety docile and gotten stung.  Other times I get completely suited up for a cranky hive to find that they couldn't care less I was there. 

I've learned the hard way to be prepared for the worst and be happy with being pleasantly surprised!