Bee's "Winter Club"

In order to resist the cold, ectothermic animals often enhance their metabolism. In order to generate more heat, bees have an amazing appetite for overeating. Bees do not have the habit of hibernating, but as individuals, they still cannot maintain the necessary body temperature. As a self-controlled social community with a sound mechanism, bees have the overall strength to withstand severe cold and freezing. So there is a "winter club" where they enjoy themselves.

The "club" starts operating in early winter every year. As long as the outside temperature drops, the bees in the hive will form a "group" with the queen bee as the center, crawling around non-stop, forming a sphere made of the flesh and blood of the bees. The bees close to the queen enjoy a large amount of honey with high caloric value and release a large amount of heat energy to prevent the bees on the outer layer of the sphere from freezing. The bees on the outer layer seem to be entangled and crowded, forming an insulating layer to protect the brothers in the inner layer from the wind and cold. The bees in the outer layer and the inner layer will exchange positions cyclically, which also regulates the temperature of the bee cluster to a certain extent. Bees rely on this teamwork and the large amounts of honey they consume to get through the cold winter.

The larvae of bees receive more than 1,300 feedings from their "nanny" every day, so they get a lot of calories. However, it is still impossible to keep warm if you overwinter alone in a single nest house. In order to keep the temperature in the hive no lower than 35°C, worker bees gather in dense gatherings to form a tight insulation layer, using their flesh and blood to protect the young bees from the severe cold. If the purpose of warming cannot be achieved in this way, the worker bees will flap their wings and fly like a brooding chicken to quickly heat up the hive and ensure the safety of the young bees over the winter.

animal tags：