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 The vast majority of insects survive the winter in a state of suspended animation. Anabiosis (Greek revival) is the suspension of the body's vital activity under unfavorable conditions of existence.
In winter, insects are exposed to low temperatures and seem to freeze. In the body of an insect, by autumn, large reserves of fat and other substances accumulate, due to which the life of the body is maintained in winter; free water in the cells of the body goes into a bound state, due to which it does not freeze at subzero temperatures, and thus the cells of the body are protected from destruction. Insects, hiding for the winter in the ground, under the bark of a tree and in other places, gradually cool down and fall into anabiotic state. With an increase in air temperature in spring, they become active again.
Unlike most insects, honey bees overwinter without falling into suspended animation, but producing a minimum of heat necessary for life. Such a way of wintering could arise in bees only as a result of their social lifestyle. The heat of one bee is completely insufficient to withstand the winter cold, but tens of thousands of individuals, gathering in a tight club, generate the required amount of heat in total, and the special structure of the club ensures its preservation. As a result, bees can even endure the northern winter with severe frosts.
However, honey bees, to some extent, retained the ability to survive during the cold in a state of suspended animation. If you gradually cool a single bee, then at 8 degrees Celsius and below it begins to cold numbness: first it will lose the ability to fly, then walk, then it will only slightly move its legs, finally, it will become completely motionless - it will freeze. If you then gradually increase the air temperature, the various functions will return to it in reverse order, and the bee will become active again. Since the necessary supply of fat and other substances is not accumulated in the body of the bee, in order to maintain it in a state of suspended animation, it is necessary that there is food in the honey crop. According to research by N.I. Kalabukhov (1933), bees with full goiter lived in a state of suspended animation 5 times longer than with empty ones. If you cool the bees to a temperature of at least 0 degrees, then with warming they return to active life. With stronger cooling, some of the bees die. Bees have lost the ability to endure long-term cooling and therefore the use of suspended animation to preserve them in winter is practically impracticable, although many beekeepers found it very tempting to keep bees in this state in winter and not spend honey stocks for their wintering.
Beekeepers often encounter cases of suspended animation in bees. So, for example, if freshly collected in a cold wintering house is brought into a warm room, then some of the bees will come to life. This, of course, is not revival, but a return to active life of the bees, which for some reason jumped out of the hive and froze before their natural death could occur. There were also cases of "revival" of families who died of hunger; weakened bees: at the same time they froze. And if soon a family with such bees is brought into a warm room, then some of the bees can return to active life, you just need to immediately give them food - sprinkle them with honey fed and transplanted onto combs with food.
 So, bees have lost the ability to live in a state of suspended animation for a long time, but they have acquired a new property - to winter in an active state, generating heat. This ability of bees is very important in the life of a bee colony. Many of the bees' instincts, and in particular the accumulation of large reserves of honey, developed as a result of the need to survive the winter.Public bees in hot countries do not collect large reserves of honey: where there is no winter, there is no need to accumulate a lot of honey. It was winter that served as the main factor that developed in bees in the process of evolution the instinct for increased accumulation of food reserves, the surplus of which is used by humans.
Preparing the family for winter
It can be said without exaggeration that during the entire spring-summer period of life, the bee colony prepares for wintering. Since spring, it grows, accumulating a lot of bees, which is necessary for the preparation of food reserves. The stronger the family, the more it accumulates honey and the more completely its successful wintering is guaranteed.
The immediate preparation of the bees for wintering begins during the main flow - the bees process the nectar and store honey stocks so that they can be easily used in winter. Thickening of the nectar prevents fermentation (souring). Fungi that cause sugar fermentation cannot develop in a solution where the sugar concentration reaches 80-82 percent. This is followed by sealing the honey with wax caps. This guarantees honey from liquefaction (and fermentation) in conditions of high humidity and from loss of water (with possible crystallization) in conditions of excessive dry air. The decomposition of cane sugar, which makes up nectar, into grape and fruit sugar is necessary mainly for winter. Cane sugar cannot be thickened to 80-82 percent without crystallization. A mixture of fruit and grape sugars can be brought to such a concentration and kept for a long time in a liquid state. At the same time, the decomposition of cane sugar prepares the honey for its absorption in the intestines of the bee, which is in an inactive (winter) state. At low temperatures, the activity of enzymes in the intestines of bees decreases sharply; the preliminary decomposition of sugar provides bees with food in winter, which can directly, without any processing in the intestines, enter the bee's blood and be consumed. Consequently, the processing of nectar and the sealing of honey in cells create the necessary conditions for the nutrition of the bees in winter.
Bees always place honey stocks at the top of the combs; the brood is inevitably pushed down below. Placing honey at the top of the nest also creates the necessary condition for feeding the bees in winter. In this case, they always have above them reserves of honey, which they feed on, moving up as it is spent.
At the Kemerovo experimental station of beekeeping, in the fall all frames were taken from the families and in exchange they were given frames of sushi; then they fed sugar syrup to watch the bees place it on the combs. It turned out that they evenly distributed the feed on all the combs they occupied. And in vivo, printed honey is placed on all combs and ends at approximately the same level.
Part of the honeycombs with bee bread along the edges of the nest are poured with honey and sealed. This also serves as a means of reliable preservation of bee bread by the end of winter and early spring. Perga, not covered with honey, often deteriorates from the dampness that occurs outside the club in winter. Research by K.I.Mikhailov (1960) showed that bees need bee bread not only in spring and summer, but also in winter.
Further, the family prepares the bees themselves for winter. In summer, in most colonies, the egg-laying of queens stops (when swarming) or decreases, since the cells that are freed from brood in the upper part of the nest are filled first with spray and then with honey. In the autumn (in August), the amount of brood increases slightly. A. Maurizio (1950) showed that an autumn bee turns into a winter bee because it retains a supply of protein in its body, since it does not feed the brood in the first period of life. In her experience, bees that did not feed the brood lived up to 188 days, and those that fed the brood only lived for 60 days.
E. A. PoteKkina (195B) showed that there is a close relationship between the work of bees, performed in autumn, and life expectancy in spring.Bees that do not feed the brood in the fall live longer and retain the ability to grow brood in the spring.
SA Rozov (1927), and later LI Perepelova, dyed bees hatched at different times in the fall and showed that bees that developed from eggs laid by the queen in July almost completely die before winter; those hatched from eggs laid in August - winter well, retaining the ability to live and raise brood in spring.
After the end of the bribe, the bee colonies drive the drones out of the hives. During this time, the bees become very angry. First, they drive the drones from the honeycombs onto the wall or bottom of the hive, and then pull them out of the hive, where the drones die. The bee colony's drones are not expelled at the same time and are finished in 3-7 days.
The instinct of expelling drones developed among bees as a necessity to use up winter food reserves with the greatest savings. Since the period of breeding and mating is over, the drones become unnecessary for the family and there is no need to overwinter them. Only families without queens or with infertile queens do not expel drones, and they go into winter. IP Levenets placed the drones expelled from the hive into a queenless family; they are fine there. They lived until the first flight, after which they returned to their family, from where they were immediately expelled, and they died.
In the fall, bees bring propolis into the hive, which is used to close all the cracks in the hive. The ceiling and the upper half of the hive are especially carefully covered with propolis. Southern races of bees also reduce the size of the entrance. For example, gray mountain Georgian bees in logs, consisting of two hollowed-out halves, in summer have several entrances in different directions. However, in the fall they close all the entrances except one. In frame hives, these bees often place propolis partitions against the entrances, in which small round holes are left.
All these facts show that bees prepare for winter so as to avoid draft in the hive in winter. Moreover, M. Lindauer showed that swarms never choose dwellings for settlement, in which there are several holes and a draft is possible. Consequently, the bees, by reducing the entrances and filling up the cracks, show that they do not need any draft of air, that they are adapted to life in winter in conditions of very poor ventilation.
While there is a brood in the colony, bees maintain the temperature in the middle of the nest within the range of 33-35 degrees Celsius. But already a few hours after the last bees leave the cells, the maintenance of a stable temperature ceases, it decreases and begins to fluctuate following changes in the external temperature (P. Lavi, 1955).
The formation time of the winter bee club depends on the strength of the colony. OS Lvov (1952) observed that in strong families the club begins to form when the outside air temperature drops to 7 degrees; in medium - up to 10 degrees, and in weak - up to 13 degrees. The drop in temperature is first felt by the bees in the extreme streets; they then rush towards the warmth into the neighboring streets. Within the limits of each street, it is coldest at the bottom and at the edges. Bees from the periphery also go to where it is warmer, i.e. to the center. As a result, they thicken in the streets, and form a dense crust at the edges. Thus, a club is created, consisting of two parts - the inner one, where it is warmer and the bees are located relatively freely, and the outer crust, consisting of bees tightly pressed against each other. At first, the club is loose and unstable: it forms at night and disintegrates during the day with an increase in air temperature. However, as soon as the cold weather settles, a permanent club is formed, which lasts all winter.
 The club is formed on combs with honey. The place where it gathers depends on the placement of the bees even in the warm season of autumn and is mainly determined by three factors: the place of the entrance, possible sources of external heat and the thermal center of the colony.
It is known that bees grow brood on combs against the entrance; on the same combs with the onset of cold, most of the bees usually concentrate. If the notch is located in the middle of the hive in autumn, then the club will gather on the middle combs; if the notch is moved, for example, to the southern wall of the hive, then the club will move to the southern wall. It was noticed that strong families are located closer to the entrance than weak ones, which often move away from the entrance to a considerable distance. We can say that the entrance, as a source of fresh air, serves as a place that attracts the emerging club of bees.
Further, the location of the club formation depends on the possible source of external heat. In autumn, when brood rearing ends, bees willingly move towards the heat source. If, for example, two families are placed in a hive, separated by a blank partition, then the bees, and then the clubs of both families, will move close to the partition, since the neighboring family serves as a source of external heat for another. In single-walled hives, such a source of external heat can be the southern wall of the hive, warmed by the sun. The bees and the club then move south. In one experiment, a light bulb (heat source) was placed on the north side of the hive behind a diaphragm; the bees, and then the club, gathered close to this wall. In well-insulated hives from above, in the presence of a lower entrance, which greatly cools the nest from below, it is noticeably warmer at the ceiling of the hive; the bee club in these cases is placed close to the ceiling. If the warming cushions are removed from the ceiling, then, as V. Koptev showed, the club is formed in the lower part of the combs; the ceiling in this case does not have an attractive effect on the bees. All these examples indicate that the sources of external heat or the warmest walls of the hive serve as places of attraction for bees and determine the place where the club is formed.
And finally, the place where the club is formed depends on the thermal center of the family, located in the lane with the womb, where the highest temperature is maintained. This center serves as an attractive force in the direction of which the bees rush, located on the periphery of each honeycomb.
If the club is not influenced by any external sources of heat, then it takes the form of a ball or ellipse with a heat center in the middle. In the presence of a warm ceiling (plus the lower entrance), the club will take the shape of a ball or ellipse, as if pressed against the ceiling. If the notch is on the south side of the front wall of the hive facing east, then a dense, compressed club will be formed, since the attractive effect of heat and the notch will act in one direction. Conversely, if the entrance is located on the north side of the front wall of the hive, the club will stretch out, since the entrance will attract bees to the north, and the warm wall to the south. When two families cohabit in one hive, the families' entrances should be in one wall of the hive and are located close to one another; then dense, clinging to one another, mutually warming clubs are formed.
Knowing the laws governing the formation of the club, the beekeeper can create conditions for the formation of a dense, compact club in a place that provides the most favorable wintering with the help of a taphole and upper insulation.
Numerous experiments have shown that the location of the club does not depend on the contents of the honeycomb. The club can form on completely sealed honeycombs and on honeycombs with empty cells, only when the top edge touches the printed honey. In natural conditions (tree hollows), the club usually forms near the entrance, on the border separating the honey cells from the empty ones.
G. F. Taranov
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