Nowadays, bees have wintered in many places have passed most of the time, in the actual breeding of many of our beekeepers will find that if the bees overwinter, it is difficult for us to find that there are male bees in the winter bee colony, and even careful friends will find that there will be male bees expelling male bees before the bees overwinter, but there are exceptions, some friends in the breeding of bees, found that there are male bees in the wintering bee colony, this situation is mostly soil farming, so what is the reason why the bees will still appear when they overwinter? According to the observation of the bee tribe xiaobian, there is a phenomenon of male bees in the wintering bee colony, there are 4 common situations, of which 3 situations are not good, today the bee tribe xiaobian will come to share it with you.
To know why worker bees expel male bees in winter, we first need to know the role of male bees in the swarm.
Male bees are not necessary in a swarm, mainly because of the special mating method of bees, because the queen bee has only a few days to mate in her lifetime, and the queen will not mate again after mating, and the stored sperm is enough for lifelong use.
Bees are a strict division of labor insects, different types of bees according to their own work needs to evolve different organs, and male bees as a provider of male substances in the bee colony, in addition to being conducive to genetic offspring, other production organs have disappeared, resulting in the role of male bees in the bee colony, in addition to mating has no use, so in theory as long as the queen bee mating is completed, the significance of the existence of male bees is to prevent sudden loss of the king, but this situation for the number of male bees is very low, In the winter, the bees need a lot of food, and the male bees have no value and eat a large amount, so they are expelled by the worker bees.
After a long period of evolution, bees have formed the habit of expelling male bees in the winter, the more obvious the winter, the more obvious this phenomenon is, but there are exceptions, many friends did find the presence of male bees in the wintering bee colony, is it that the habits of bees have changed? In fact, it is not so, through the above introduction we can find that the male bee is necessary, that is, when the male bee is needed in the bee colony, and the only role of the male bee is to mate with the queen, that is to say, if there is a male bee in the bee colony, it means that there is a queen in the bee colony, a queen is needed, a queen will be produced, and the normal male bee is four situations, now let's look at it separately.
(1) There is a queen in the bee colony: If there is a queen in the bee colony, then there is no male bee mating, the virgin queen will appear to lay eggs for mating, and can only lay unfertilized eggs, which is fatal to the bee colony, although the overall situation in the bee colony is controlled by the worker bees, but this may make the population extinct, the worker bees still understand, so even in winter, as long as there is a queen in the bee colony, the worker bees will also allow the male bees to overwinter with the bee colony. So in the winter we can also see the presence of male bees, but such a swarm, winter is very difficult, it is likely to fail, which is not allowed when breeding bees.
(2) The queen bee is needed in the bee colony: the queen bee in the bee colony is actually because the queen is lost in the bee colony, although the queen needed here has the best spawning queen, but from the wild bee, a colony that loses the queen bee cannot get the spawning queen at all, so the habit of the bee is that when the bee colony loses the queen, it will inevitably produce a queen, even if it does not occur, the worker bee will also let the bee colony meet the mating conditions, so in this case the bee colony is also allowed to exist male bees.
(3) The queen will be produced in the bee colony: This situation was mentioned above, and the more common is that we use native bees, due to the difficulty of changing the king of this breeding method, many friends often do not change the king, resulting in a situation where the queen is too old in the bee colony.
For the bee, the queen bee is not the boss of the bee colony, in fact, the bee colony is a mutual supervision mechanism, but this supervision, most of which is determined by the worker bees, when the queen bee is old, whether it can still be used, it is also decided by the worker bee, so if the queen bee is too old, the worker bee may be prepared for the replacement of the queen bee, then there may be male bees in the bee colony, the purpose is to mate with the new queen bee.
(4) Normal male bees: Remember that the bee tribe Xiaobian once said a sentence, that is, in the high-quality bee colony, there will be a small number of male bees, in fact, this is an emergency mechanism for bees, even if there is a high-quality spawning queen in the bee colony, but in order to avoid the accidental death of the queen bee, a small number of male bees will be retained in the normal bee colony.
So if our local winter temperature is high, in fact, this is not winter, as long as the bees can still be normal activities, can not be regarded as winter, bees do not have a seasonal concept, only pay attention to the honey source and temperature two problems, as long as these two conditions are met, the bees can still be active, will be like the normal bee colony, in the bee colony to retain a small number of male bees to avoid the accidental death of the queen. Therefore, this phenomenon cannot be regarded as a wintering bee colony, but it belongs to winter, but the bees can still be normally active.
So on the whole, if we find that there are male bees in our wintering bee colony, in addition to the local winter is not cold at all, as long as the bees are overwintering, the time is not short-term, basically we can determine that the bee colony is not normal, and we need to deal with it in time.