Where do honey bees go in the winter?

TOPEKA (KSNT) - You may not see the honey bees buzzing through the air during the winter months, but that doesn't mean they're not still hard at work.

While other animals are moving into their dens to hibernate through the coldest parts of the year, honey bees are still just as busy within their hives as they tend to their young and queens. KSNT 27 News spoke with local beekeeper Tim Urich with T Creek Bees & Honey to find out just what the bees are up to during the winter. Earlier this year, he helped relocate a huge colony of honeybees found in southeast Topeka.

Urich said bees don't enter a hibernation state as we might expect to see with other animals. Rather, they come together into a single cluster as temperatures decrease.

"What the bees do essentially is they form a winter cluster," Urich said. "The purpose of the winter cluster is for the bees to conserve heat, primarily in the middle of the cluster. In the middle is the queen."

Urich said the bees maintain a balmy 93 degrees Fahrenheit temperature inside the cluster in an effort to keep the queen warm and well-fed.

"It's not enough for them to be close together, they have to generate heat," Urich said. "They have to flex their bee muscles. In a way, they're shivering to generate that heat. Not exactly how a human shivers. The shivering can generate 92-95 in the middle."

This takes up a lot of energy from the bees who have to rely on stored honey to keep up the pace through the winter. Urich, who keeps track of several local colonies inside bee boxes, says the winter cluster of bees will shift around, gradually working through the honey inside their homes.

On warm days in the winter, Urich said he can see bees moving around inside their boxes with a small number gathered around the queen to help her stay warm.

"The cluster expands and contracts depending on the ambient air temperature," Urich said. "When the temperature starts to trend down, the bees will start to tighten up to keep the queen warm and any brood warm."

The bees you might find in a bee box during the winter may look the same as those you'll see in the summer, but these are not the same as those you'll see flying around in June or July. Urich described the winter bees as being "more durable, heavy duty bees" with differences in their makeup which allow them to live for a much longer time than bees in the summer.

"Summer bees and winter bees are different," Urich said. "Summer bees live four to six weeks and work a variety of jobs. In a healthy summer colony, 1,000 bees can be born and die every day. In the winter, the bees have to live a long time. Winter bees can live four to eight months."

Inside the hive, a queen will start to lay eggs for the spring brood after the winter solstice passed on Dec. 21. These will gradually replace the winter bees as warmer temperatures return.

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