Honey Bee Workers As Mobile Insulating Units, Insectes Sociaux Bookmark and Share

Excerpts: Heat-shielding is a method used by honey bee workers to insulate temperature sensitive brood from localized heat stress during development. Due largely to data collection techniques, heat-shielding has been defined as stationary bees congregating with their ventral side facing the heat stress. We conducted tests to determine if shielding behavior was limited to bees fitting this description. (...) Our observations strongly suggest that stationary bees on the brood comb shield the developing brood from both localized heat and cold stress: after temperature-stress, the number of bees under the stressor significantly increased. (...)
  • Source: Honey Bee Workers As Mobile Insulating Units, A. J. Siegel, J. Hui, R. N. Johnson, P. T. Starks - philip.starksatufts.edu, DOI: 10.1007/s00040-005-0805-1, Insectes Sociaux, Aug. 2005
  • Contributed by Pritha Das - prithadas01ayahoo.com