Bee Lines: Winter Adaptations

by Sam Hall –

I’m writing this on Saturday after walking about three miles on back farm roads in Gorham. The temperature stayed at 32 but there was little or no wind. It was pleasant. I looked at my beehives and tapped on the side of one and heard their response.  It was welcome, and music to my ears.

We are experiencing some of the coldest temperatures for this time of year that I remember. There does not seem to be any discernable pattern. When the temperature drops below 45 the bees will generally start to cluster making a ball around the queen. They reverse their wing muscles so they will not fly when they start using them in sort of a shiver. By the mass of the bees doing this they create heat. The bees on the outside are always working their way inside and the ones inside working their way to the outside. So that they all get some heat and cold. Similar to what the penguins do.

If the temperature stays below 45 for a protracted period of time, the bees cannot move within the hive. This is what happened last February when we had day after day of sub-freezing temperatures. The bees could not break cluster to move to new stores if they depleted the stores where they were when the temperatures plummeted. It is a real dilemma. Without moving they starve if they do move they freeze. Invariably they do not move and they run out of stores and starve even though the hive may have a 100 pounds of honey in it.

The past couple of weeks I have been gathering milkweed pods that were on the verge of opening. Once open the wind scatters the seeds wherever it blows. Most will never grow into plants but enough will that their survival is assured. It is their survival that the Monarch butterfly relies on, for without them they would perish.  Milkweed blooms I am told are the Monarchs’ only food.

I keep the pods until they are dry and have popped open. The seeds look like a tiny parachutist. I cannot help but wonder if this may have been the source of the idea for a parachute. Some people I have given seeds to like them to grow in a specific place. They will plant them and not understand why they do not grow. They are a wild flower and if you plant them they will not grow but if you simply scatter them they or some of them will grow where they land. You can try to dampen a milkweed seed and lay it on the bare ground and it should grow there. I have made up fourteen bags of milkweed seeds for unsuspecting friends.  Some will realize this is a connection to nature that we all need and others will not but will try to sow them properly as well.

As the winter solstice approaches, I find myself shivering and putting on warmer clothing, I think wouldn’t it be nice to have evolved differently so that like my dog we didn’t have to keep adding and subtracting clothing. However, it is all part of being alive and being human.