Bee size and overwintering ability? Relationship?

[Adrian Quiney WI]

Hi, I have been wondering if the size of a bee has a relationship to its colony's overwintering ability. For mammals biologists talk about Bergman's rule which, as I understand it, is that there is a biologic advantage to being larger in the winter in a northern climate. Thicker bodies conserve heat better.
Yet with bees, from what I've read here in the threads in the forums there seems to be an advantage to the bees that form a smaller cluster and use less stores.
Does anyone know, or in the absence of knowledge I'll settle for good old-fashioned speculation, whether bee size in that cluster is a factor?

[kirk-o]

You know I don't know how you would even determine if size got them through the winter.There are so many factors that add up to survival.You know healthy bees plenty of stores weather all kinds of things.I have small cell natural cell I find healthy bees do good period.Healthy bees over come obstacles
kirk-o

[Michael Bush]

>Healthy bees over come obstacles

:)

[NeilV]

I don't really know what I'm talking about, but why let that stop me?

Interesting questions, and here's my two cents.

It seems to me that there are at least three different considerations. First, there is the size of individual bees. Second, there is the size of winter cluster (which depends on the size of the bees somewhat but more on the number of bees). Third is whether the animal is warm or cold blooded.

As to the size of the individual bees, it would seem that a small bee could cope with hot weather better, such as by not overheating while foraging. A larger, darker bee might be able to work better in colder weather. That probably explains why tropical bees are smaller/lighter than colder climate bees. All things being equal, I wonder whether big bodied bees might be more suited for cold environments. (Okay, I'm going to jump in my foxhole now while the small-cellers lob grenades.)

Also, body size could be linked to other, more important factors, such as development time. For example, Africanized Bees and Scuttelata (sp?) emerge quicker than European bees. That is apparently due to living in a boom and bust environment, due to rain and drought. They need to makes babies faster, and they may do that by being smaller.

Of course, its probably much more complicated than that.

As to the winter cluster, a bigger cluster may be warmer, but it it takes more fuel/stores to keep it alive. There would be an advantage to having a small cluster in cold climates because it takes less stores to get through long winter with a small cluster. The food usage trumps the thermodynamics of having a bigger cluster.

Finally, I suspect that the idea that bigger critters do better in cold climates has more truth when you are talking about warm blooded animals. The reason this is true is that there is propotionally less surface area to body mass if a creature is bigger, which conserves body energy. Cold blooded creatures just go dormant in cold weather to preserve energy. In fact, cold blooded animals probably are bigger on average in tropical climates, but that's probably because they don't have to hibernate.

Seems to me that honeybees are, in a sense, both warm blooded and cold blooded. Individual bees are cold blooded. The hive, however, moderates its own temperature and is a warm-blooded super-organism.

ndvan