12 Degrees outside and bees are flying

[A37]

I have bees walking around my top entrance hole and some bees are trying to fly. Some are falling in the snow trying to do orientation flights. Shouldn't these bees be clustered?

[Van, Arkansas, USA]

In severe cold I have seen a few bees do what I call a susicide walk.  I believe, my assumption is the bees are going to die naturally, they know they are going to die, so they make an attempt to leave the hive.

I am attempting to explain a phenomenon, my opinion, based on my observations.  I am not stating a fact based on bonafide data.

If there are a lot of bees, then this is different from my explanation.  Maybe a desperate attempt at a cleansing flight.
Blessings

[Troutdog]

In severe cold I have seen a few bees do what I call a susicide walk.  I believe, my assumption is the bees are going to die naturally, they know they are going to die, so they make an attempt to leave the hive.

I am attempting to explain a phenomenon, my opinion, based on my observations.  I am not stating a fact based on bonafide data.

If there are a lot of bees, then this is different from my explanation.  Maybe a desperate attempt at a cleansing flight.
Blessings

My bees do that as well, I always figured it a sign of cognitive failure from mixing with the imports.

On the other side it could be a sign of situation developing nosema or worse taking a few down and they choose to leave. Altruism of the hive.



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[herbhome]

I have also read accounts by old time beekeepers of this behavior. They believed that snow on the ground confused the bees into thinking it was a full sun day and it led to their death. I don't know of any scientific data on this phenomenon though.

[Acebird]

Hopefully it is just a few and not an indication that the colony is suffering from viruses.

[A37]

I hope everything is alright, the bee circled is another one trying to orientate that ended up in the snow.

[little john]

I have also read accounts by old time beekeepers of this behavior. They believed that snow on the ground confused the bees into thinking it was a full sun day and it led to their death. I don't know of any scientific data on this penomenon though.

It's true.  We don't have serious snow over here that often, but when we do - I just place a board over each entrance to stop bees from being fooled by the bright light reflected off the snow.  Here's a shot of snow boards in use:



Snow boards are a very simple fix to cure this problem.
LJ

[Van, Arkansas, USA]

Lil John,,,,,,, you call that a snow????). Whyyyy There is not 2 inches.  Come across the pond, we will show ya snow, real snow, measured in feet, not inches.
Blessings, Buddy

[Dallasbeek]

Question:  why are new bees orienting at this time?  Seems to me the winter bees are the (should be?) the only bees in that hive.  Queen should have stopped laying long ago, so no house bees should be " graduating" to field bee status.  Therefore, the idea ofthe reflected light making them think it's a nice, sunny, warm day that allows for a cleansing flight makes more sense.  The catch to that is whether or not winter bees are capable of flight.  Answer, anyone?

[splitrock]

Not sure why you would ask if winter bees can fly.

Of course they can.

[little john]

They sure can.

Over here in Britain we're currently experiencing one of our typical winters: a week or two of biting icy-cold conditions - of which the newspaper headlines often read "Colder than Moscow" - followed by a week or two of almost shirt-sleeve weather.

The reason for these sudden swings in temperature is due to us living on a relatively small land mass on the eastern edge of a very large body of water, so that as cyclonic depressions created within the Atlantic Ocean move towards us - due to the rotation of the planet - the weather we then receive is dictated by a fairly arbitrary wind direction: whether it's pulling down icy-cold air direct from the Arctic, or pulling up warm dry air from northern Africa.

Yesterday we got a dose of warm, water-laden air from the South-West (tropical region of the Atlantic), which arrived with strength. Here's a shot of some idjuts in west Wales taking photographs:



And so over on this side of the country, the result of these strong warm winds  was a brief window for orientation and/or clearance - in the middle of winter - for those hives positioned behind some kind of shelter. I would guess that roughly half of my colonies put some bees into the air for an hour or two around midday.

LJ

[Michael Bush]

This Monday morning it was -17 F here.  This morning was -6 F.  Not a record by any means... I've seen -27 F here and -40 F in the Panhandle of Nebraska and when I lived in Laramie, Wyoming.