Winter Brood Triggers

[little john]

Light is well-known zeitgeber which stimulates and entrains circadian rhythms (our daily biological clock) - which is why people tend to awake at the same time each morning.  If you turn the lights off later, you'll tend to wake-up later.
 
But think  - how does the earthworm or mole deep underground know it's spring ?  It won't be the soil warming-up, at least not to begin with.  There are other rhythms in Nature, apart from circadian rhythms - monthly (thanks to the moon), annual, and one or two others.  A fascinating area of biology.

Checkout: http://millar.bio.ed.ac.uk/andrewM/Jo%20Selwood%20site/other_rhythms.htm  for a brief description.

LJ

[Van, Arkansas, USA]

Yes Sir, Lil John, you nailed it as usual:  thanks for the link, informative. In this thread Bush84 has provided info that indicates his bees were not triggered by light to begin laying.  So the question remains, if not light, then what triggered the queen to lay.

There is a finch imported from Australia and brought to USA.  This finch, lays in the US winter.  I don?t remember the exact species of finch, it is a beautiful, yellow, blue, red.  Obviously the trigger for this bird to lay is biological, I am GUESSING age, the finch lays at one year of age regardless of light.  Clearly light is a trigger for most species.

So, speaking for myself only, thanks to Bush84 :). I am at a complete loss as to what triggers a queen to lay.  I used to believe light was the trigger exactly as Beepro pointed out.  Now ?I dunno.?  I am thankful for post by Bush84 and others in which I learn how little I know about bees.

I just inspected 6 hives, sunny clear 82F 02/15/18, some hives had larva, others did not.  These bees fascinate me, there is so much that is just not known.
Blessings

[Bush_84]

Again this is the exception for what I have seen in the past. My other hives has had a small patch coming out of the shed. This hive was just huge and had friggin drones when I took them out of my shed. I still have this same queen. I will see in a month or so how she is laying. I am definitely going to breed from her this summer. I will probably move her over to a nuc this year. She is nearing three years old and I worry that she will get swarmy. I can also probably graft from her easier this way.

[little john]

These bees fascinate me, there is so much that is just not known.

Hi Van - yes, I'm intrigued by what Dan's doing as well.  Not the sort of thing I'll ever be doing myself (afaik), so I'm just a very interested spectator on this one.

You know, there are SO many questions about bee behaviour which don't fit into either the stimulus-response or 'instinct' category (with 'instinct' being but another way of 'fessing-up that nobody really knows) ... such as:

Why do bees draw comb - period ?  Do they know in advance that a worker or a drone will be raised in those cells ?  If so - how do they know that ?  Even bees who have never seen a comb in their lives before (except those from which they emerged) will draw combs precisely for this purpose.  [thinks - does a bird know in advance that it will be laying eggs, before it starts to build a nest ?]

And - how do the bees 'know' to draw that comb with the cells sloping slightly downwards ?  Do they know it will be used for storing a liquid - if so, how do they know that ?  And so on ...

Then there's the whole collecting and storing of pollen, and hundreds more other examples of uber-precise purposeful behaviour.  D@mned hard to explain any of those by simple stimulus-response mechanisms.

I once saw a video where some professor or other was boasting to some students that 'we know' how bees navigate, whilst showing them the waggle dance.  Yes - that's a fascinating 'taster' of what's undoubtedly involved, but to claim 'we know' ?
That was clearly a bloke who knows sod-all about what's involved in navigation.  How do the bees measure and compensate for cross-wind drift, for example ?  It's not enough just to have some kind of biological compass and the coordinates for a destination.  Yep - so many questions ...
LJ

[eltalia]

Then there is overnight temperatures and relative humidity.

For the controlled environment - as a shed hibernation would
provide - both these factors are likely a drawback for bees
in what to do when. The real (flying) conditions are masked.
One solid argument to have each colony manage on it's
own where masses of colonys are not required to be deployed
to catch an event, as in farmed out.

Bill

[Acebird]

Why do bees draw comb - period ?  Do they know in advance that a worker or a drone will be raised in those cells ?  If so - how do they know that ?

If the super organism wants drones they will clean out cells that drones can be raised in or make the cells if they don't exist.  Same thing for raising queens.

[little john]

Why do bees draw comb - period ?  Do they know in advance that a worker or a drone will be raised in those cells ?  If so - how do they know that ?

If the super organism wants drones they will clean out cells that drones can be raised in or make the cells if they don't exist.  Same thing for raising queens.

Ok - if you think it's that simple ...
worker bees use their bodies as templates when drawing worker cells.  How do they know what size to make the drone cells ?  They don't carry blueprints or any form of measuring device except their own bodies.

Of course one can simply say "it's just what bees do" - but how exactly do they go about doing this ?  The truth is that we know next to nothing about how bees operate.  Certainly, that for me is part of the attraction of keeping these amazing little bugs.
LJ

[Van, Arkansas, USA]

The hexagonal cell shape is a wonder of the Honey bee.  Mathematical, the hexagonal shape of cells presents the strongest with the most efficient use of space:

Squares cell would crush
Round cells waste to much space
Triangles cells sacrifice strength and create dead space.

Take any possible shape you can think of in rows , and the hexagonal is the strongest yet most efficient for conservation of space.  I believe only the honey bee has done the math correctly.  Wasp build round paper (very weak) or mud cells.  How did the honey bee figure the perfect strength to shape ratio?  Lil math wizards they are.

[Acebird]

Take any possible shape you can think of in rows , and the hexagonal is the strongest yet most efficient for conservation of space.

Round would be stronger but is consumes way more wax because there wouldn't be common sides.  The thing is the hexigon is strong enough.