Does the honey bee have nothing to do with biodiversity in winter?
Even in the icy winter, hay milk cows are well protected and don't have to worry about getting enough food. The Woerle dairy farmers give you only the best feed made from sun-dried, plant-rich hay. But what do the honey bees do? In the summer you could see them still busy flying through the hay flowers, suddenly they are all gone? How and where do they spend the winter? Why is the bee also important for the (hay milk) cheese in winter? And what important things does the beekeeper do for the honey bees in winter?
Difference between summer and winter bee
Summer bees hatch between spring and summer and work all day long - foraging for food, collecting nectar, producing honey, building comb, nurturing and nurturing the offspring, caring for the queen and defending the hive from invaders. If you work so hard and have stress all your life, you won't get old. The summer bee is only about 4 - 6 weeks old. A summer bee colony usually consists of 50 - 80.000 bees. The winter bee, on the other hand, only hatches in late summer or autumn after the flowering period. Their job is no longer to collect honey, but to get their queen safely through the winter and in the spring to raise the brood for the following summer. It lives much more quietly and, at around 6-9 months, much longer than the summer bee. A winter bee colony consists of only about 10-20.000 bees. (Source: Johann Laireiter, Chairman of the Mondsee Beekeeping Association)
Feeding
While we humans are still enjoying the summer in August and September, the beekeepers among the Woerle dairy farmers start harvesting the ripe honey "the liquid gold" towards the end of July and slowly prepare the honey bees for the winter. The supply of flowers is now scarce and in winter honey bees do not leave their hive for several months. So that the bee colony survives the winter well and can produce enough heat in the hive, it needs enough food. The hard-working summer bees take care of the storage for the winter and store enough food in the honeycomb so that the winter bees can feed on it. After the flowering period in summer, the Woerle beekeepers provide the colony with the right amount of food so that the bees don't starve. As sustainable beekeepers, the Woerle dairy farmers leave the bees with some of their own blossom honey from the summer and supplement the feeding with sugar water or ready-made feed. "If I have to top up shortly before the end of winter, then only with honey, because it gives the bees more energy and contains more protein, pollen, etc. for the brood," explains Woerle dairy farmer Josef Liebewein Honey that I will harvest later. That would be a big disadvantage for the quality.”
The honey bee's worst enemy
A bee colony needs the help of the beekeeper to be able to survive in the long term. Because the 1970 millimeter Varroa mite, which was introduced from Asia in the 1,7s, is the greatest threat to our bee colonies. “The varroa mite is a parasite that feeds on the blood of adult bees or bee offspring. The bees carry the dangerous enemy on their backs into the hive and it spreads through the brood. Heavy infestations result in crippled and weak bees. Without proper treatment in the preparatory period, our bees would mostly not survive the winter. One or two additional treatments in winter are often necessary for the safety of the bee colony," explains Woerle dairy farmer Matthias Ebner, deputy chairman of the Mondsee beekeepers' association. “However, you need a lot of knowledge, experience and instinct to successfully combat the Varroa mite. Bee-friendly and environmentally friendly treatment is very important to me," adds the nature-loving beekeeper.
Honey bees - group cuddling and teamwork
Group cuddling and cooperation are two very successful survival strategies for honey bees in winter. The winter bees hibernate together in the hive and move very close together to form the so-called “winter cluster”, which they use to protect each other from the cold. The queen sits in the middle of the cluster, well protected and warmed by her workers. As soon as the temperature in the hive falls below 10 degrees, the entire colony of bees begins to tremble with their wings again up to 30 degrees. In winter, they can even withstand double-digit minus degrees. Positions are regularly swapped within the cluster so that none of the bees are "overburdened" and all are evenly "warmly cuddled". The winter bee is also very useful and hard-working and needs the collected honey supplies to cover its energy needs and to get the entire colony through the winter unscathed. As soon as it gets warmer again in the spring, the hibernation of the bees ends. The summer bees hatch and start looking for the first hay flowers to collect fresh pollen and nectar again.
Even if we don't see much of the winter bees during the cold months, they still do very important work and make an indispensable contribution to biodiversity, because they ensure a strong winter colony with a young, healthy queen and a colony that will be hard-working enough again next year flower-pollinating and honey-producing bees.
