Brood Nest
In subtropical climates, bees may not form a winter cluster at all. Worker bees forage and queens lay eggs almost year-round.
In the temperate zones, winter temperatures dip below 54 °F (12 °C) for extended periods. All brood rearing stops for some period during the winter. In early spring, brood rearing resumes inside the winter cluster when the queens starts to lay eggs again. Once a broodnest is established, the cluster must maintain a steady temperature between 94.1 to 98.0 °F (34.5 - 36.7 °C) inside the cluster. If the temperature in areas of the brood nest dips too low the brood dies - also called chilled brood.
Read more about this topic: Winter Cluster
Famous quotes containing the words brood and/or nest:
“Speech is often barren; but silence also does not necessarily brood over a full nest. Your still fowl, blinking at you without remark, may all the while be sitting on one addled egg; and when it takes to cackling will have nothing to announce but that addled delusion.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.... Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
—Harper Lee (b. 1926)