When a colony has thousands of bees clustered outside the hive to form a beard, it usually means one of two things. Beard is a term used to describe how bees congregate at the front of the hive in a beard-like shape.
Bees cluster outside the hive in order to cool themselves. Bees generate heat, and hives become hot as a result. If the bees need to keep cool, then they leave the hive and seek colder places while remaining in a swarm. Bees will return to the hive when temperatures cool down.
When a group of bees comes together, the bees form “beards” that hang from the front of the hive and emerge from the landing area or hive entrance. Clustering is called bearding when the bees form a fluffy beard on the hive and come out of it in a cluster.
The practice, called bearding, is a process in which a large congregation of bees gather outside the hive and flap their wings to draw heat away from the hive. When it’s hot outside (usually 90 degrees Fahrenheit or higher), the bees resort to a practice called bearding. The beard gives the bees a chance to cool off outside while they wait for the temperature in the hive to become comfortable again. Since there is no nectar to collect and it is hot inside the hive, the bees usually collect it in their beards on the outside.
Bees Leave the Hive When It Overheats
On hot and particularly humid nights, many bees spend the night outside the hive, clinging to the front of the hive, or they may form whiskers on the ground in front of the hive. On very hot days, if the hive is poorly ventilated and the inside of the hive is too hot, the bees will congregate outside the hive.
Bees don’t like to work when the weather is particularly hot. To keep the honey at the right temperature and let air into the hive, a small or large number of adult bees stop in front of the hive to help keep the internal temperature cool. When the temperature is around 64 degrees Fahrenheit, the bees may start to gather in the hive to keep the queen and themselves warm.
Another way honey bees regulate the temperature of their hive is through the use of “warming bees”, whose job it is to vibrate their abdomens, which allows them to vigorously move their muscles to warm up the hive’s body movements. In winter, your bees may nestle against the brood cells to share body heat with them.
Leaving their hive and clinging outside is a method honey bees use to help regulate the internal temperature of the hives by snuggling together and flapping their wings to create airflow. During very hot summers, when temperatures reach extremes and the hive population is large and overcrowded due to abundant nectar flow, the bees leave the nest en masse and congregate outside their hive to try to keep cool and keep the hive from overheating. and kill the brood.
Bees Remain in the Hive During Winters
For most of the winter, the winter group remains intact, but when the outside temperature exceeds 50 degrees Fahrenheit, the bees leave the hive for a moment to get rid of the waste. To keep the clusters warm and wintery, the clusters crawl and climb in formation around the hive to reach their honey stores.
On warm days, the bees briefly leave the cluster to clean up bodily waste outside the hive. During a heat wave, the colony may break up the aggregation so that the bees can make cleansing flights, and if the heat lingers too long, the queen may begin to increase brood production.
At the end of winter and throughout spring, when the weather gets warmer, a single queen bee begins to populate the hive, laying more eggs. The first new queen stays in the hive for about a week while the rest of the worker bees get used to their own. Ellie bought a new queen for each of these impromptu colonies, adding a few partial frames of honey to her food, and will test them on Tuesday (3 days later) to see if they have accepted the queen and if they are ready to continue growing.
The worker bees move around to keep the internal temperature of the hive high enough to keep them going, from 80 degrees F near a single queen bee to 45 degrees F outside the group.
The Movements of the Queen Bee
The queen bee is always in the center of the cluster, the worker bees rotate from outside to the inside of the cluster, so none of the worker bees get cold. For the same reason, during periods of prolonged low temperatures, bees in the hive need to store honey close to where they gather.
This coordinated movement of air through the colony can also be observed during periods of warm weather when the bees need to cool the interior of the hive to maintain the optimum brood rearing temperature of 94-95 degrees Fahrenheit (34-35 degrees Celsius). accompanied by bees flying outside the hive.
The standard hive can then be moved to a new location, preferably after dark so the rest of the bees are inside. Nasanova’s pheromone says “come here” and is used to help swarm bees together after they leave the hive, and to help them find the entrance to the nest when the swarm moves to a new location.
The swarming bees need a new home to move in, so you’ll need to provide them with a new hive or they may settle in a less-than-suitable location. Fear not, the bees have a nice new home, like two small colonies in a nuclear bomb box that will come under closer scrutiny.
