6 ms·

Honeybee clustering when it's cold is a distress behavior: study

145 points by sohkamyung 3y ago

pests 3y ago
I read a great book Honeybee Democracy by Thomas Dyer Seeley (2010) Highly recommended for more information on bees and their hives.
WaitWaitWha 3y ago
A couple of notes on the article, that I disagree with, backing it up by "appeal to authority" through my decades as a beek. > These man-made hives have very different thermal properties compared with their natural habitat of thick-walled (150mm) tree hollows. Bees, including Apis mellifera will build hives anywhere where there is sufficient cover, space, and ventilation, not just "thick-walled (150mm) tree hollows". > On cold days in these thin-walled hives, colonies form dense disks of bees, called a cluster, between the honeycombs. The presumption is that the human made hives are less thermally protective because they are "thin-walled". This is just patently incorrect. There are many, many hive designs and many are made out of wood, but many are made out of plastics or even styrofoam. Their thermal protection can be significantly higher than 150mm wood (later noted in the article substantially insulating, such as 30mm of polystyrene".) Bees do not form a dense "disks of bees". They form a ball, and rotate in and out with the queen around the center, just like the referenced penguins. I could not identify the type of hives that were evaluated. From the picture, it appears to be a tiny apiary with Langstroth design, all with three full/deep/brood boxes. From the pictures in the paper, they evaluated eight hives. I am willing to learn, but this single article provides insufficient details how the data was collected and in what context was done. Most non-initiates think that beekeepers somehow control bee colonies like cows or chicken. Not so much. If a colony decides they want to leave, there is almost nothing you can do about it; they will leave. If they figure they did not like the winter, they will move. A hive will be just fine in a felled log, a hollow tree, or human made space for years without any interaction. It is more of a symbiotic relationship than a stewardship. edit: spellingerating fixage
- spearo77 3y ago
  This is the study they referenced – https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2023.0488 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2023.048... That in turn references supplementary material with a MATLAB folder containing csv and code. https://rs.figshare.com/collections/Supplementary_material_from_Honeybee_cluster_not_insulation_but_stressful_heat_sink_/6935474 https://rs.figshare.com/collections/Supplementary_material_f...
- bragr 3y ago
  >this single article provides insufficient details how the data was collected Ah see that's the trick, they didn't collect any data. This is a modeling exercise [1] by the author, with any real values they need cherry-picked from other papers. And having reached a conclusion with their model that doesn't agree with reality (that clustering reduces bees' temperature), they've decide the problem must be with reality. My kingdom for a couple thermocouples stuck in a bee ball! [1] https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2023.0488#d1e1240 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2023.048...
huytersd 3y ago
I had this strange thought the other day that the way all animals deal with winter is a distress behavior. Bears in hibernation, if you observe footage, look supremely ragged and uncomfortable. I don’t think it’s a pleasant experience and they just stumble through it like a human with no shelter would.
ChumpGPT 3y ago
We would use thick Styrofoam insulation (2-3) inches thick and would insulate the entire hive with it. In the winter we would feed them occasionally with warm honey/sugar. The Hives were also protected by a row of thick Evergreens as a wind break. Maybe lost one or two hives over a decade. If your not wrapping them and preparing them for winter than you shouldn't have bees.
- cryptonector 3y ago
  Where? I don't insulate mine, but it's Central Texas, where... it does admittedly get very cold from time to time, but not usually for very long.
- poulsbohemian 3y ago
  > If your not wrapping them and preparing them for winter than you shouldn't have bees. This is such a bold statement given the variety of climates in which bees are kept, and simultaneously overlooks research that indicates starvation is an even bigger issue than cold in many places.
  - ChumpGPT 3y ago
    I'm talking about a winter climate like the article. No one is going to wrap a hive in Hawaii...But anywhere you have temperatures that drop into the minus ranges requires care. If bees are starving to death, the keeper is taking too much from them or the environment won't support them (Desert).
- sfink 3y ago
  The article directly agrees with you (though your thickness is even better than they propose): > This means that for hive walls to be effective, they have to be substantially insulating, such as 30mm of polystyrene.
- mrweasel 3y ago
  Modern Scandinavian beehives are normally made from Styropor, and about 30 - 40mm thick. The bees will still cluster. I do think you're on to something though, because losing only two hives over a decade is pretty impressive, regardless of your number of hives. A common issue is that the bee will cluster and move "the wrong way" in the hive, away from available food, and the get stuck in a corner and starve. It seems like the level of isolation you provide might be enough that the bees are more free to move around.
nuc1e0n 3y ago
Honeybee Christmas of course
cbsmith 3y ago
I wonder if this is in some way part of the cause of colony collapse...
- SquirrelOnFire 3y ago
  That seems unlikely, given that beekeepers have kept hives in similar thin-walled boxes for centuries and colony collapse is a recent phenomenon. Plus CC occurs in wild populations[1] as well, suggesting either a widespread environmental factor or communicable agent. [1]https://www.nrdc.org/stories/colony-collapse-disorder-why-are-bees-dying https://www.nrdc.org/stories/colony-collapse-disorder-why-ar...
  - cbsmith 3y ago
    I wasn't suggesting it was the cause, so much as a contributor. There's a general sense that the odds of CC increase as the colony becomes more and more stressed.
alternative_a 3y ago
I think it inaccurate to think of the hive as an extension of phenotype of an individual bee. It’s a bit recursive since it is the collection of the individual bees — the hive — that builds the physical aspects of the hive. What is interesting here is the tantalizing notion of layers of awareness and individuality and what (or more interestingly where) is the human super-organism operating.
- lioeters 3y ago
  At first I thought, the city is an extension of phenotype of an individual human. But perhaps it's the web where the human collective thinks its super-thoughts. Or, we have no collective at all, just a bunch of individuals behaving selfishly. ..Or both, the selfish behavior adds up to our collective behavior, in which case, the human super-organism seems only dimly aware of itself.
  - alternative_a 3y ago
    I haven’t given up on hidden dimensions yet. For the Bee, we know chemical gradients (queen) provide a ‘center’ and likely act as hormones in an unit. I.e. beyond ‘environmental markings’ (sounds, text, images, constructs) are there other possibilities for ‘joining’? Psi stuff is wu but remains a possibility.
giantg2 3y ago
This is interesting, but what is the application? The debate about insulating or not has been going on for a long time. Anecdotal experience has been that losses have been similar for people who insulate vs not insulating, and those losses vary from year to year. Of course there are numerous other reasons for colony loss, but if this was a significant factor, I would assume we'd see a noticeable effect.
- notanote 3y ago
  Agreed. Beekeepers have gathered a lot of experience. Is some of it based on incorrect understanding of science? Sure. Would they have noticed if insulation was a deciding factor in loss of colonies? Absolutely. I will say that this article together with one from earlier this year [1] put into question the benefit of cold storage. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-39095-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-39095-5
- Yhippa 3y ago
  My takeaway is that clustering is a distress signal and that reducing distress would be the humane thing to do assuming that insects feel pain.
  - pvaldes 3y ago
    > assuming that insects feel pain Sometimes it seems that this kind of philosophical narratives are anchored in XVII century science. Everything with pain receptors feels pain. Period. Animals evolved this structures exclusively to feeling pain. Because this is a very positive trait if you want to survive. Insects and other invertebrates are known to have pain receptors since the XX century (Yes, clams feel pain, and roundworms feel pain also). This is not new ground breaking science at all. What is new is using this to move forward the agenda of the cruelty animal crew. I'm not against building better beehives, but we should focus, --laser focus--, our attention and most of all our scarce resources investing into much more urgent problems with insect species losing of habitat, being poisoned and facing extinction. Because money is scarce on conservation and much more scarce on invertebrate conservation; and "give me money or this bee will die frozen two days before to just die of old age and be replaced by other bee" is a ridiculous problem.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jadbox 3y ago
The ending was a little odd to me. Why would someone believe that hives aren't extended phenotype of the bee? As the article examples: hives to bees are like beavers to dams.
- cosmojg 3y ago
  Or buildings to humans!
- dwallin 3y ago
  I felt the article pretty thoroughly explained why the author feels that hives are not currently respected as an extended phenotype. Many studies of bee behavior are run on bees in artificial hives. They are treating artificial hives as interchangeable with their natural equivalents and assuming that the behavior observed reflects normal bee behavior. This can lead to many erroneous conclusions, the same way you might get misleading studies on beaver behavior if you studied a bunch of beavers living in a rabbit hutch. To quote from the article: > Honeybee (Apis mellifera) colonies don’t hibernate. In the wild they overwinter in tree cavities that keep at least some of their numbers above 18°C in a wide range of climates, including -40°C winters. But popular understanding of their overwintering behaviour is dominated by observation of their behaviour in thin (19mm) wooden hives. These man-made hives have very different thermal properties compared with their natural habitat of thick-walled (150mm) tree hollows.
  - krisoft 3y ago
    > This can lead to many erroneous conclusions, the same way you might get misleading studies on beaver behavior if you studied a bunch of beavers living in a rabbit hutch. There is a very nice paralel to this. There was a study which suggested that the temperature of lab mice housing (which is roughly room temp) is too cold for mice. If they could they would turn the thermostate up. So they are in a constant state of low-key hypothermia, which might affect all kind of immunology and stress experiments. Cold animals is the most obvious paralel in these two stories, but if we squint at it we can see that the paralel is that something which is done for the experimenter’s convenience might have unexpected distorting effect on results.
fsckboy 3y ago
so my analogy for this type of bias is, I only want to discuss things like whether (we should have helped Ukraine resist Russia /or/ if Israel's response to Hamas is appropriate) with people who are completely honest about their motivations. If you are "anti-war" (typical meaning in the Western context) just say that you are anti-war. I can understand the position, I won't freak out, and I will make sure your vote will be counted. But I don't want to discuss it with you just to hear you invent a bunch of customized reasons why in each circumstance there's no logic to helping Ukraine or Israel, etc. If you are ethically a vegetarian, just tell me that, don't tell me how unhealthy meat is, it's a waste of time (=a portion of both our precious lives), it's a lie, and it's bad science (as in it's motivated to a goal, not that it's necessarily wrong; if it turns out to be right, the boy-who-cried-wolf is not the right messenger). we used to think that bees cluster to keep warm, didn't we? this person says clustering is a stress response... well, being cold can be stressful, so can taking the GREs, that doesn't mean it's not good for you. So then I read this shit: > Deliberately inducing clustering by practice or poor hive design may be considered poor welfare or even cruelty, in light of these findings. There are almost no ethics standards for insects. But there is growing evidence that insects feel pain. A 2022 study found that bumblebees react to potentially harmful stimuli in a way that is similar to pain responses in humans. We urgently need to change beekeeping practice to reduce the frequency and duration of clustering Nothing wrong with thinking we need to stress over reducing bee stress, but you're stressing me when I discover that I'm listening to a person obsessed with a fairly narrow slice of what it means to be a human, or what it means to be a bee.
- rightbyte 3y ago
  That was a very indirect way to say you don't care for bees' housing? And I don't agree with your point either. Auxillary arguments are good. If the bees' housing needs don't concern you. Maybe a claim that they make better honey while not stressed would.
- calf 3y ago
  How do you reasonably distinguish this between a serious disagreement in a debate, versus an author with an axe to grind (i.e., having hidden motivations)?

145 points by sohkamyung 3y ago

I read a great book Honeybee Democracy by Thomas Dyer Seeley (2010) Highly recommended for more information on bees and their hives.

WaitWaitWha 3y ago

A couple of notes on the article, that I disagree with, backing it up by "appeal to authority" through my decades as a beek. > These man-made hives have very different thermal properties compared with their natural habitat of thick-walled (150mm) tree hollows. Bees, including Apis mellifera will build hives anywhere where there is sufficient cover, space, and ventilation, not just "thick-walled (150mm) tree hollows". > On cold days in these thin-walled hives, colonies form dense disks of bees, called a cluster, between the honeycombs. The presumption is that the human made hives are less thermally protective because they are "thin-walled". This is just patently incorrect. There are many, many hive designs and many are made out of wood, but many are made out of plastics or even styrofoam. Their thermal protection can be significantly higher than 150mm wood (later noted in the article substantially insulating, such as 30mm of polystyrene".) Bees do not form a dense "disks of bees". They form a ball, and rotate in and out with the queen around the center, just like the referenced penguins. I could not identify the type of hives that were evaluated. From the picture, it appears to be a tiny apiary with Langstroth design, all with three full/deep/brood boxes. From the pictures in the paper, they evaluated eight hives. I am willing to learn, but this single article provides insufficient details how the data was collected and in what context was done. Most non-initiates think that beekeepers somehow control bee colonies like cows or chicken. Not so much. If a colony decides they want to leave, there is almost nothing you can do about it; they will leave. If they figure they did not like the winter, they will move. A hive will be just fine in a felled log, a hollow tree, or human made space for years without any interaction. It is more of a symbiotic relationship than a stewardship. edit: spellingerating fixage

spearo77 3y ago
This is the study they referenced – https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2023.0488 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2023.048... That in turn references supplementary material with a MATLAB folder containing csv and code. https://rs.figshare.com/collections/Supplementary_material_from_Honeybee_cluster_not_insulation_but_stressful_heat_sink_/6935474 https://rs.figshare.com/collections/Supplementary_material_f...
bragr 3y ago
>this single article provides insufficient details how the data was collected Ah see that's the trick, they didn't collect any data. This is a modeling exercise [1] by the author, with any real values they need cherry-picked from other papers. And having reached a conclusion with their model that doesn't agree with reality (that clustering reduces bees' temperature), they've decide the problem must be with reality. My kingdom for a couple thermocouples stuck in a bee ball! [1] https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2023.0488#d1e1240 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2023.048...

huytersd 3y ago

I had this strange thought the other day that the way all animals deal with winter is a distress behavior. Bears in hibernation, if you observe footage, look supremely ragged and uncomfortable. I don’t think it’s a pleasant experience and they just stumble through it like a human with no shelter would.

ChumpGPT 3y ago

We would use thick Styrofoam insulation (2-3) inches thick and would insulate the entire hive with it. In the winter we would feed them occasionally with warm honey/sugar. The Hives were also protected by a row of thick Evergreens as a wind break. Maybe lost one or two hives over a decade. If your not wrapping them and preparing them for winter than you shouldn't have bees.

cryptonector 3y ago
Where? I don't insulate mine, but it's Central Texas, where... it does admittedly get very cold from time to time, but not usually for very long.
poulsbohemian 3y ago
> If your not wrapping them and preparing them for winter than you shouldn't have bees. This is such a bold statement given the variety of climates in which bees are kept, and simultaneously overlooks research that indicates starvation is an even bigger issue than cold in many places.
- ChumpGPT 3y ago
  I'm talking about a winter climate like the article. No one is going to wrap a hive in Hawaii...But anywhere you have temperatures that drop into the minus ranges requires care. If bees are starving to death, the keeper is taking too much from them or the environment won't support them (Desert).
sfink 3y ago
The article directly agrees with you (though your thickness is even better than they propose): > This means that for hive walls to be effective, they have to be substantially insulating, such as 30mm of polystyrene.
mrweasel 3y ago
Modern Scandinavian beehives are normally made from Styropor, and about 30 - 40mm thick. The bees will still cluster. I do think you're on to something though, because losing only two hives over a decade is pretty impressive, regardless of your number of hives. A common issue is that the bee will cluster and move "the wrong way" in the hive, away from available food, and the get stuck in a corner and starve. It seems like the level of isolation you provide might be enough that the bees are more free to move around.

nuc1e0n 3y ago

Honeybee Christmas of course

cbsmith 3y ago

I wonder if this is in some way part of the cause of colony collapse...

SquirrelOnFire 3y ago
That seems unlikely, given that beekeepers have kept hives in similar thin-walled boxes for centuries and colony collapse is a recent phenomenon. Plus CC occurs in wild populations[1] as well, suggesting either a widespread environmental factor or communicable agent. [1]https://www.nrdc.org/stories/colony-collapse-disorder-why-are-bees-dying https://www.nrdc.org/stories/colony-collapse-disorder-why-ar...
- cbsmith 3y ago
  I wasn't suggesting it was the cause, so much as a contributor. There's a general sense that the odds of CC increase as the colony becomes more and more stressed.

alternative_a 3y ago

I think it inaccurate to think of the hive as an extension of phenotype of an individual bee. It’s a bit recursive since it is the collection of the individual bees — the hive — that builds the physical aspects of the hive. What is interesting here is the tantalizing notion of layers of awareness and individuality and what (or more interestingly where) is the human super-organism operating.

lioeters 3y ago
At first I thought, the city is an extension of phenotype of an individual human. But perhaps it's the web where the human collective thinks its super-thoughts. Or, we have no collective at all, just a bunch of individuals behaving selfishly. ..Or both, the selfish behavior adds up to our collective behavior, in which case, the human super-organism seems only dimly aware of itself.
- alternative_a 3y ago
  I haven’t given up on hidden dimensions yet. For the Bee, we know chemical gradients (queen) provide a ‘center’ and likely act as hormones in an unit. I.e. beyond ‘environmental markings’ (sounds, text, images, constructs) are there other possibilities for ‘joining’? Psi stuff is wu but remains a possibility.

giantg2 3y ago

This is interesting, but what is the application? The debate about insulating or not has been going on for a long time. Anecdotal experience has been that losses have been similar for people who insulate vs not insulating, and those losses vary from year to year. Of course there are numerous other reasons for colony loss, but if this was a significant factor, I would assume we'd see a noticeable effect.

notanote 3y ago
Agreed. Beekeepers have gathered a lot of experience. Is some of it based on incorrect understanding of science? Sure. Would they have noticed if insulation was a deciding factor in loss of colonies? Absolutely. I will say that this article together with one from earlier this year [1] put into question the benefit of cold storage. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-39095-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-39095-5
Yhippa 3y ago
My takeaway is that clustering is a distress signal and that reducing distress would be the humane thing to do assuming that insects feel pain.
- pvaldes 3y ago
  > assuming that insects feel pain Sometimes it seems that this kind of philosophical narratives are anchored in XVII century science. Everything with pain receptors feels pain. Period. Animals evolved this structures exclusively to feeling pain. Because this is a very positive trait if you want to survive. Insects and other invertebrates are known to have pain receptors since the XX century (Yes, clams feel pain, and roundworms feel pain also). This is not new ground breaking science at all. What is new is using this to move forward the agenda of the cruelty animal crew. I'm not against building better beehives, but we should focus, --laser focus--, our attention and most of all our scarce resources investing into much more urgent problems with insect species losing of habitat, being poisoned and facing extinction. Because money is scarce on conservation and much more scarce on invertebrate conservation; and "give me money or this bee will die frozen two days before to just die of old age and be replaced by other bee" is a ridiculous problem.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

jadbox 3y ago

The ending was a little odd to me. Why would someone believe that hives aren't extended phenotype of the bee? As the article examples: hives to bees are like beavers to dams.

cosmojg 3y ago
Or buildings to humans!
dwallin 3y ago
I felt the article pretty thoroughly explained why the author feels that hives are not currently respected as an extended phenotype. Many studies of bee behavior are run on bees in artificial hives. They are treating artificial hives as interchangeable with their natural equivalents and assuming that the behavior observed reflects normal bee behavior. This can lead to many erroneous conclusions, the same way you might get misleading studies on beaver behavior if you studied a bunch of beavers living in a rabbit hutch. To quote from the article: > Honeybee (Apis mellifera) colonies don’t hibernate. In the wild they overwinter in tree cavities that keep at least some of their numbers above 18°C in a wide range of climates, including -40°C winters. But popular understanding of their overwintering behaviour is dominated by observation of their behaviour in thin (19mm) wooden hives. These man-made hives have very different thermal properties compared with their natural habitat of thick-walled (150mm) tree hollows.
- krisoft 3y ago
  > This can lead to many erroneous conclusions, the same way you might get misleading studies on beaver behavior if you studied a bunch of beavers living in a rabbit hutch. There is a very nice paralel to this. There was a study which suggested that the temperature of lab mice housing (which is roughly room temp) is too cold for mice. If they could they would turn the thermostate up. So they are in a constant state of low-key hypothermia, which might affect all kind of immunology and stress experiments. Cold animals is the most obvious paralel in these two stories, but if we squint at it we can see that the paralel is that something which is done for the experimenter’s convenience might have unexpected distorting effect on results.

fsckboy 3y ago

so my analogy for this type of bias is, I only want to discuss things like whether (we should have helped Ukraine resist Russia /or/ if Israel's response to Hamas is appropriate) with people who are completely honest about their motivations. If you are "anti-war" (typical meaning in the Western context) just say that you are anti-war. I can understand the position, I won't freak out, and I will make sure your vote will be counted. But I don't want to discuss it with you just to hear you invent a bunch of customized reasons why in each circumstance there's no logic to helping Ukraine or Israel, etc. If you are ethically a vegetarian, just tell me that, don't tell me how unhealthy meat is, it's a waste of time (=a portion of both our precious lives), it's a lie, and it's bad science (as in it's motivated to a goal, not that it's necessarily wrong; if it turns out to be right, the boy-who-cried-wolf is not the right messenger). we used to think that bees cluster to keep warm, didn't we? this person says clustering is a stress response... well, being cold can be stressful, so can taking the GREs, that doesn't mean it's not good for you. So then I read this shit: > Deliberately inducing clustering by practice or poor hive design may be considered poor welfare or even cruelty, in light of these findings. There are almost no ethics standards for insects. But there is growing evidence that insects feel pain. A 2022 study found that bumblebees react to potentially harmful stimuli in a way that is similar to pain responses in humans. We urgently need to change beekeeping practice to reduce the frequency and duration of clustering Nothing wrong with thinking we need to stress over reducing bee stress, but you're stressing me when I discover that I'm listening to a person obsessed with a fairly narrow slice of what it means to be a human, or what it means to be a bee.

rightbyte 3y ago
That was a very indirect way to say you don't care for bees' housing? And I don't agree with your point either. Auxillary arguments are good. If the bees' housing needs don't concern you. Maybe a claim that they make better honey while not stressed would.
calf 3y ago
How do you reasonably distinguish this between a serious disagreement in a debate, versus an author with an axe to grind (i.e., having hidden motivations)?