Heater Bee
Lexikon
Heater bees, also called warming bees, are workers that actively generate heat to keep the brood nest at an even temperature.
Heater bees, also called warming bees, are workers that actively generate heat to keep the brood nest at an even temperature. Instead of moving their wings, they tense the flight muscles in the thorax and let them vibrate against each other, so that heat is generated through muscle work alone. For this, heater bees often position themselves directly on or between capped brood cells and pass their body heat directly to the developing pupae.
The aim of this heating work is a brood nest temperature in the range of about 32 to 36 degrees Celsius, and deviations over a longer period can visibly disturb the development of the brood, with malformations of the wings, legs or abdomen then threatening. Since the brood itself can hardly generate any heat of its own, an even brood temperature depends entirely on the interplay of many heater bees in the colony, which distribute themselves over the brood nest as needed.
In practice, this behavior explains why small colonies with few bees have difficulty keeping larger brood areas warm in early spring, and why heavily thinning out a colony in spring is risky. Good thermal insulation of the hive also supports the heater bees, because less energy is lost in balancing the temperature with the outside air. A common misconception is to attribute temperature regulation solely to the queen or, in general terms, to the entire bee cluster; in fact, individual, specialized heater bees take on this task in a targeted way.