# Why do bees fly into the snow?



## Solomon Parker (Dec 21, 2002)

Do they send a few sacrificial scouts out every morning to check the conditions?

I also found bees on the snow where I fed a few days ago when it was 70.


----------



## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Bees need to fly. It's their nature to do so. Plus, they need to deficate outside of the hive. So, they fly. And when they fly in really cold temperatures their body temp drops and they loose muscle control and fall to the ground or onto the snow.


----------



## Solomon Parker (Dec 21, 2002)

From reading other posts, I get the impression that some hives (queens) do this less, and the some configurations of hives do it less also. Is this a factor?

And please no "bees need to fly" answers. They don't need to fly when it's freezing.


----------



## HONEYDEW (Mar 9, 2007)

Well then I guess you have all the answers..:no: trust me you will get many answers to your questions on this site, as in all beekeeping ask one question get ten answers :doh:


----------



## Konrad (Oct 7, 2004)

On a sunny day when the sun hits the entrance some bees think it's warm enough and take off,
but then chilling fast mid air and drop. You can help by shading the entrance.

Konrad


----------



## Adrian Quiney WI (Sep 14, 2007)

Check "nature's nectar blogspot" Jim wrote an interesting post on this recently.


----------



## JRH (Dec 30, 2010)

WiredForStereo said:


> ... some hives (queens) do this less, and the some configurations of hives do it less also. Is this a factor? ... They don't need to fly when it's freezing.


I have hives sitting side by side where one has lots of bees flying on any sunny day - 5F or 35F - and an another has none flying.

I've never figured out why one wants to fly when the other does not. In the snow and cold, flying is never a good idea if you're a bee.

JRH


----------



## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

I've wondered why bees fly out of the entrance, flit upside down, and dive head first into the snow. You don't see them do that in the summer time...flipping upside down and hitting the dirt. It's not always the cold that does it. I've seen bees fly on a cold day and get far away. This happens just after leaving the hive.

A friend and I think it might be this...bees fly toward light. They have two compound eyes, but also three small simple eyes called ocelli.

"It is now believed that these ocelli function to keep the insect continually in a state of stimulation to light, and thus, make the compound eyes more quickly responsive. _Hive and the Honeybee_" 2000, p. 164

So it just could be that the bees see the white snow, mistake it for the light of the sky, and crash.


----------



## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

WiredForStereo said:


> And please no "bees need to fly" answers. They don't need to fly when it's freezing.


Is that as far as you read? I'm sorry if my Reply wasn't satifactory to you. Why did you ask the question to begin w/? Did you need to?


----------



## Skinner Apiaries (Sep 1, 2009)

Mites dont help


----------



## beeware10 (Jul 25, 2010)

It is natural for the old and diseased bees to fly out in less than ideal conditions and die. In a bee yard and one hive flys when conditions seem odd, sometimes they are light of honey and act restless. If you only have one hive you have nothing to compare against. some loss is just normal.


----------



## Barry (Dec 28, 1999)

*Why do bees fly into the snow?

A waggle dance gone bad!
*


----------



## BeeCurious (Aug 7, 2007)

sqkcrk said:


> Why did you ask the question to begin w/? Did you need to?




"Did you need to?"
:lpf:




BTW, MP's theory seems pretty good to me. 

Someone could do a little experiment by perhaps spreading some ashes over the snow in front of some hives.




> Barry*
> 
> Why do bees fly into the snow?
> 
> A waggle dance gone bad!*


Six left feet?


----------



## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

BeeCurious said:


> BTW, MP's theory seems pretty good to me.


Me too. I should have waited until he replied. I have that feeling so often. His and Michael Bush's.


----------



## Solomon Parker (Dec 21, 2002)

sqkcrk said:


> Is that as far as you read?


No, I read the whole thing over and over again to try and figure out if you were being simplistic on purpose, or were just feeding me a bogus answer when you had no idea what you were talking about.

This is Beekeeping 101, not Beekeeping for Idiots. 

Read it over again, do you really think you were communicating useful information? I don't.

Perhaps I should have posted the question in a forum with a more 'advanced' title, like Beekeeping for Experts. I just thought it was a basic question that I had missed in the 9 years I've been reading Beesource and so I posted it here, but I guess I was mistaken.

So, no, I don't have all the answers. But I am looking for useful ones and I am intelligent enough to know the difference.


----------



## Birdman (May 8, 2009)

Have you ever tried to carry 6 ski's and fly?:lpf:
sorry couldn't help myself


----------



## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

I was replying to the question w/ my own opinion and not trying to be anything other than myself. Not all replys are answers, informative answers or factual answers. I'm sorry if I thru you off. I wasn't trying to be flippant. Just throwing out my 2 cents.

MP's analysis is a good answer to the OP's query, imo.

Along the lines of the first question: Where, in the cluster, do these bees come from? The bottom of the cluster, closest to the entrance? Why don't more of them fly? How old are the bees? Are they bees that have flown before or are they taking orientation flights? In Feb.? Bees flying when they shouldn't is a mystery.


----------



## larrythebeek (Dec 29, 2009)

JRH said:


> I have hives sitting side by side where one has lots of bees flying on any sunny day - 5F or 35F - and an another has none flying.
> 
> JRH


I have 2 hives and see the same thing.... One will have bees flying anytime it's really sunny, the other will only have activity if it's over 50 or so. I started with two so I could compare them, it's amazing how different they can be.

When my kids were younger, I used to toss them outside with sleds when they drove me crazy (after the 3rd day of no school). Maybe one of my hives has lots of younger bees 

Larry


----------



## camero7 (Sep 21, 2009)

I was just out cleaning the ice off some hives and observed MP's observations. Had never noticed it before. Thanks Mike!


----------



## Cedar Hill (Jan 27, 2009)

WiredForStereo said:


> From reading other posts, I get the impression that some hives (queens) do this less, and the some configurations of hives do it less also. Is this a factor?
> 
> And please no "bees need to fly" answers. They don't need to fly when it's freezing.


 Some races of bees can hold it in better than others.... :lookout:
OMTCW


----------



## Cedar Hill (Jan 27, 2009)

Cedar Hill said:


> Some races of bees can hold it in better than others.... :lookout:
> OMTCW


Sorry, just couldn't resist! If you are having "hundreds" leave in this manner, it could be for a myriad of reasons. IE. mites, AHB trait, some critter in there, etc. In fact, we are fortunate in our area in that hives with africanized traits (imported pollinating hives on the bogs during the summer) have difficulty living here for this reason, they fly out and don't know when to return. OMTCW


----------



## Michael Palmer (Dec 29, 2006)

Cedar Hill said:


> Some races of bees can hold it in better than others....
> OMTCW


Maybe some races of bees make less of it than others.


----------



## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

Cedar Hill said:


> In fact, we are fortunate in our area in that hives with africanized traits (imported pollinating hives on the bogs during the summer) have difficulty living here for this reason, they fly out and don't know when to return. OMTCW


On what evidence do you base your assurtion that "imported pollinating hives on the bogs" are "hives with africanized traits"? Or are you making assumptions?


----------



## Cedar Hill (Jan 27, 2009)

Many years of pollinating experience on those bogs.... and you? OMTCW


----------



## sqkcrk (Dec 10, 2005)

I was making no assurtions, you were. What makes you say they are africanized? It seems like an outrageous claim.

And what does OMTCW mean? Speak English won't ya please?


----------



## Ma-Honey (Aug 8, 2010)

Only My Two Cents Worth.
Jeeze the snow is making everyone a tad cranky.
I think the theory of snow on the ground confusing the girls as to which way is up makes sense. An old beekeeper told me to put hay on the ground, it may give them a chance to make it back to the hive if they land.


----------



## treeoflife (Aug 20, 2009)

The timing of this question was interesting to me.....I just read about this phenomenon in Winter World by Bernt Heinrich. He's a scientist (biologist) who wondered about this very question in regard to his own hives. He set out to find a plausible answer.

He suspected the snow did disorient the girls, so he spread wood shavings in front of his hives and found fewer bees getting confused. But he found this didn't account for all of the behavior. Were they trying to cleanse? He found too many of them had chosen to fly but wouldn't bother to void even though they were out long enough to do so. After dissecting some dead bees, many indeed still had feces in their gut. So that wasn't the whole answer, either.

He finally concluded that since bees have no sense of calendar dates and are likely interested in the absolute earliest pollen sources of the season, they routinely send out scouts to check things out. While they get it wrong on many occasions and end up diving into the snow from the cold or snow blindness, eventually they will get it right and find that wonderful first pollen of earliest blooming trees. I find this very plausible and it explains this behavior to my satisfaction.


----------



## Solomon Parker (Dec 21, 2002)

Now that is the sort of answer I was looking for. Thank you!

Perhaps the extent of the hive mentality is even deeper that we have imagined. If this is true, that means individual bees are routinely sacrificed for even a small benefit for the hive at large. That could suggest a deeper collective intelligence. That means that there definitely is a minimum cluster size needed to overwinter because it's basically a war of attrition against the cold. That's why clusters die of small size with plenty of stores.


----------



## devdog108 (May 7, 2009)

WiredForStereo said:


> Now that is the sort of answer I was looking for. Thank you!
> 
> Perhaps the extent of the hive mentality is even deeper that we have imagined. If this is true, that means individual bees are routinely sacrificed for even a small benefit for the hive at large. That could suggest a deeper collective intelligence. That means that there definitely is a minimum cluster size needed to overwinter because it's basically a war of attrition against the cold. That's why clusters die of small size with plenty of stores.


While in training to earn my stripes as a Marine, we studied WW1 and WW2. Many times, a very young Marine, usually a pvt, would be forced to remove his gas mask to test for mustard gas etc....and if he didn't he was shot, onsite for disobeying a direct order. I didn't believe it until I graduated bootcamp and got to see my Grandfather about a week later. It was then he opened up about some things, and he did verify they did do that. He did it with a 9mm pointed at his head in Germany!

with that in mind, It doesn't seem far fetched for me to imagine these little critters with that sort of intelligence. They are truly a wonder of nature and at times, i believe we have barely scratched the surface of what we "think" we know about them!


----------



## green2btree (Sep 9, 2010)

On the "turning upside down and crashing" bit - you will see the same behavior from fish at night when you are diving. If you shine your light on them from the side they will flip so their dorsal fin is towards the light. Then they will keep bouncing off the bottom as they try to swim. It's pretty funny - of course they aren't dying while doing it!

JC


----------



## Konrad (Oct 7, 2004)

[QUOTE
He found too many of them had chosen to fly but wouldn't bother to void even though they were out long enough to do so. After dissecting some dead bees, many indeed still had feces in their gut. So that wasn't the whole answer, either.
.[/QUOTE]

This is hard to believe...
How do you really know they were out long enough?..In cold weather bathroom may just take a bit
longer when chilled ...or doesn't work at all.

When shading the entrance temperature difference is allot and most bees stay inside and not on
the landing board...thus no flight takes place. To my observation bees flying in freezing temperature
only happens when sun is out.


----------

