Beejoy Beekeeping Newsletter - Winter 2025
- Grai St. Clair Rice
- Jan 31
- 7 min read
Deep Winter
The stretch of winter without bees can feel interminable. We have readied our colonies for the long lean months of cold, and left them to do what they do. And, it’s not yet time to check them for spring build up.
At first, a satisfaction with the quietude provides a much needed reprieve from the physical labor of bees and other outdoor work. Attention turns to reading, contemplating and lusting over a slew of arriving catalogues with beekeeping equipment and botanical offerings.
Then, after that novelty wears off, an aching creeps in…A tender longing for the sight of sun on their wings, the intoxicating delicacy of wafting air and the sensational intimacy of nature resonates within, waiting for spring.
This is neither science nor religion…it is the deepest part of winter.
Winter Beekeeping Tasks
Turn Attention Inward
The deep cold of winter turns our beekeeping attention inward. We should consider the year just past and plan a course for the season ahead.
Add to Your Knowledge Base About Bees
Mid-February Brood-rearing
Plan for Feeding Your Bees.
Crunch Time for Hive Loss
Don't Feed Pollen Too Soon
Crunch Time for Hive Loss
In the Northeast, mid-February through the end of March is the critical time for hive loss. Brooding starts incrementally by mid-February, seemingly initiated by longer daylight not warmer temperatures. Brood-rearing changes everything in an over-wintering colony as the internal dynamics shift into a higher metabolic state, not just for individual bees but also for the superorganism as a whole.
High brood-nest incubation temperatures require more “heater bees” to consume more food stores just as the hive’s supply is dwindling. Natural foraging is often in the distant future, and the threat of starvation/freezing is ever more tangible.
Once there is an expanding nursery of spring brood to feed, “winter bees” begin the delayed transition through their physiological maturation related to behavioral colony related tasks. Temporal polyethism in a colony has been on pause in a broodless hive, and kick-starts when brooding begins again. In short this means, the winter bees begin using up their vitellogenin (Vg) and stored fat bodies to create brood food, and tend the young. As tasks accelerate juvenile hormone (JH) hastens their life-history towards demise.
If more winter bees perish proportionally before spring bees can replace them, the hive population will plummet. A tight winter cluster, with a low metabolic rate during the early part of the season, is transformed into a high metabolic brood factory. The expanding brood core, with its high nutritional demands, and the diminishing mantel of protective bees on outside of the cluster holds both a promise of a strong spring colony or the peril of a colony that could perish.
As tenders of the hives, we can attune ourselves to this critical shift by understanding the dynamic timeline, observing the bees and taking timely action. Feeding carbohydrates can provide a critical lifeline for a colony until natural seasonal forage can provide. Feeding pollen in mid-winter is generally not advisable, as it can spur the bees to create more brood than their supplies warrant, adding to their vulnerability.
Beekeepers are all happy to see bees flying on a warm day in January….and see poop on the snow, but we aren’t there yet. Seeing our bees flying at the beginning of April is the goal to work towards.
Reframing Nature/Nurture
A colony of Honey bees (Apis mellifera) is recognized as a superorganism, having evolved into eusocial insects from solitary bees and wasps millennia ago. Their advanced social structure, including their communication/language skills, and their communal lives over multiple generations runs close to human societal structure.
The study of the societal functioning of these unique creatures, has been advanced in the past 30 - 50 years, due to advancements in technology as well as the visionary investigations by multi-faceted thinkers looking for answers to complex questions, and of course a multitude of grad students put to tasks.
Gene E Robinson, from the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, is a prime example of those who study the Honey bee for insights into human behavior and society.
Gene E Robinson has been the Director of the Institute for Genomic Biology since 2001. He was in a leadership role for the Honeybee Genome Sequencing Consortium, which completed the task of sequencing the Honeybee genome in 2006. Robinson states, “The first discovery in the science of genomics is that basically all organisms are playing with the same deck of cards, that is all organisms share a large number of genes.”
The Interdisciplinary Study of "Sociogenomics"
Robinson’s in-depth work in the Robinson Lab is particularly relevant to broadening an understanding of human behavior, through a lens of what he has coined “Sociogenomics.” This avenue of interdisciplinary study engages genomics, molecular biology, neuroscience, behavioral biology, and evolutionary biology, as well as a deep interest in reframing “Nature versus Nurture.”
For Robinson “The big discovery is that the gene expression in the brain, the activity of genes in the brain, is very very sensitive to environmental conditions, and in particular to social stimuli. This really has changed the way we understand the regulation of behavior.…. what this means is we can reframe nature/nurture. It’s not genes and the environment, it’s that both nature and nurture act on the genome, just at different time scales.
A better way to see this is that there are long term inherited changes and influences on the genome, this is what we call nature, and then short term environmental influences on the genome, this is what we call nurture.”
A new subsidiary science called Epigenetics looks at the biological mechanisms of how environmental factors and social behavior change gene activity without altering the DNA. Epi is a prefix that comes from Greek meaning “above,” “over,” “upon.” Simplistically explained: genes within DNA do not change structure, although individual genes can be turned off or on depending on outside influences.
This work has the possibility of actively changing the approach to human behavioral development and the social/environmental influences that act upon it.
Relevance to Beekeeping Practice
Why should a beekeeper care about any of this, as far as relevance to an individual’s beekeeping practice? The most fundamental relevance to consider for beekeeping practice pertains to the interactions between the beekeeper and the bees they are tending. In the nurture paradigm, it seems likely that if a beekeeper works their bees in a decidedly aggressive fashion, squishing bees between boxes without much regard for bee lives, the bees will learn to be on defense against the intruder. If tending hives is a gentle affair over time, the bees will develop a more trusting demeanor and be easier to work over multiple generations.
Of course, there are certainly aggressive bees out in the world with mean temperaments not quelled by gentle interaction, and this behavior leans into the long term nature paradigm, which has been ingrained in some bees' gene expression.
An additional relevance of this query for beekeepers, is the pure fascination of thinking how the study of honeybees plays such an invaluable role in expanding the scientific understanding of the influence of environment and social interaction on all behavior.
Balancing Act of Nature/Nurture
The growing Sociogenomic evidence of the dynamic balancing act of Nature/Nurture in Robinson’s lifework can shine a light on how human society raises its young, how no matter what age nurturing/or lack of it can influence behavior, plus how positive/negative communal activity can develop exponentially.
It makes so much sense. This perspective begins to pull into focus elements of human nature that can be implemented through positive interactive action. It provides a wealth of ways to lift up members of our human society, contemplate our relationships with other creatures on the earth, and help all our lives thrive.
Human society is infinitely more complicated than Honey bee society, even with the obvious comparisons. Scientific data is also not the be all and end all of understanding, however it is a big part of the puzzle.
The biggest difference between humans and Honeybees in communal life is that bees do not have egos. The ego infinitely complicates our human society.
The Newness of a Child's Eyes
It’s difficult to explain in a few words the breadth of experience that being a beekeeper for 20 years has brought to my life. I should refrain from the attempt, as in the telling I might diminish the wealth of wisdom bees have offered me. I could only merely skim the depths of passion I have developed for this incredible species and their communal lives.
There are no way to describe the awe one feels in their presence, nor the expansion of consciousness to embrace the fullness and fragility of our environment thru the care of pollinators, and all that that entails.
Citations & Links
Amdam GV, Fennern E, Havukainen H. Vitellogenin in honey bee behavior and lifespan. In: Galizia CG, Eisenhardt D, Giurfa M, editors. Honeybee neurobiology and behavior. Dordrecht: Springer; 2012. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2099-2_2
Robinson Lab. Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Available from: https://lab.igb.illinois.edu/robinson/
The Honeybee Genome Sequencing Consortium. Insights into social insects from the genome of the honeybee Apis mellifera. Nature. 2006;443:931–49. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature05260
Robinson G. Gene Robinson on reframing nature vs. nurture [video]. YouTube. 2023. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oybmsJ17W4g
Enjoy the quiet of the winter season! Stay tuned for the next beekeeping newsletter...
Learning new things is a great way to prepare for the bee season ahead.
Want to become more engaged beekeeper?
February 22 & 23
Saturday & Sunday, 10am - 5pm
Build a foundation for a beekeeping practice that is both intelligent and passionate! This 2-day course combines scientific knowledge with a philosophical approach to enhance your connection with honeybees.
About the Author:
Grai St. Clair Rice
Grai has been a beekeeping educator since 2006. She teaches beekeeping classes, coaches beekeepers, does public presentations, writes about honey bees and gardening for pollinators, publishes the Beejoy beekeeping newsletter, and consults on landscape plantings.
Comentários