Written by MOLLY SAMUEL • FEB 10, 2020
For original article at WABE click here.
When it’s cold, honey bees cluster together in their hives feeding on the honey they saved to eat through the winter, vibrating to generate warmth.
“The bees are inside keeping their brood warm,” said Linda Tillman, a master beekeeper and the president of the Georgia Beekeepers Association.
The problems arise when the temperature is a little warmer, around 50 degrees, which has happened a lot this winter. When it gets that warm, the bees will start coming out of the hive, to clean up and to look for pollen and nectar.
“If it is a really warm day, they start looking for the possibility that spring is actually here,” Tillman said. “And at this time of the year, there’s no nectar. So they fuel themselves with the honey they have stored in the hive, and that uses up their stores.”
If this happens a lot, the bees might eat all the honey they’d saved for the winter, and there’s a risk of starvation, said Jennifer Berry, research coordinator at the University of Georgia honey bee lab.
“We do see higher starvation rates during warmer winters,” she said. “And if the beekeepers are not paying attention, then we do lose the colonies.”
