Before the first flowers bloom, brief spells of warmth invade the cold winter days, calling bees to collect water. With only thick honey in the hive, nurse bees desperately need water for brood rearing.
Even when the air is too cool, the breezes too chilly, foragers fly from their hives, under the warmth of a bright sun beaming out from between gray clouds. Bee flight surges at nearby water sites. During these ephemeral conditions, water collectors could easily chill and perish if capricious clouds block the sun’s warmth for too long, particularly near the end of the day.
A good beekeeping practice is to provide close-by water locations for bees. In particular, the site should provide safe landing and lift-off places. Figure 1 shows a safe place on an old flat board for bees to load with water.
Another danger for bees when collecting water is simply falling into it. When the bee traffic is intense at the water’s edge, bees crowd at choice loading spots, jostling each other for better positions. I have observed unfortunate bees lose footing, get bumped at the wrong instant, and “splash” (more like a little ripple) — another bee has fallen in the cold water. Figures 2 and 3 show a fraction of a second at a moderately crowded site. Figure 4 shows a bee caught in the water, trying to fly away.
Curiously, most of the bees that I remove from the water tank have been loaded with water. Although I have not studied this variable in detail (as binary, loaded or not loaded; or quantitatively as the amount of loading), a post-mortem finding of the bees being loaded suggests that the bees fell in the water at launching, or just after launching, with their water load. In addition to being in the cold water while loaded with water, a bee in water has another difficulty to overcome when trying pull herself back onto some dry structure …
