Usually, the inside of a honey bee colony is a stable environment that maintains a temperature of around 95☏ (35☌). She took photos and emailed them to Dr McAfee, who then got in touch with other beekeepers around the province who were witnessing the same mass die-off. In the midst of British Columbia's 2021 summer heatwave, Huxter began noticing dozens of dead drones on the ground. It's pretty extreme.'ĭr McAfee is in contact with a network of honey producers and beekeepers across British Columbia, including Emily Huxter, a beekeeper in the city of Armstrong. 'They have this elaborate endophallus that comes out and is about the size of their own abdomen. 'When drones die from shock, they spontaneously ejaculate,' said Dr Alison McAfee, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia (UBC). It's already known that rising temperatures caused by climate change will require species to adapt to survive, but as it stands honey bees are needing a little help from keepers to withstand heat shock. 'Each queen that wasn't able to mate is lost income, and there are only so many queens you can produce in a year.' 'Queens sell for $45 or more,' Dr McAfee said. If they have inadequate mates their colonies will have less genetic diversity, which would make them less resistant to disease and other stressors.īeekeepers don't only sell honey - they also rear honey bee queens to sell to other keepers use to replenish their stocks. Queens mate with multiple males, between 10 and 20 drones. Half of the bees follow their old queen, while the other half stay behind and rear a new one.īeginning in May, drones will be born and eventually mate with the young queens. She lives her life inside the hive, attended by worker bees who groom and feed her.īee colonies produce worker bees in preparation for 'swarming', the process by which a single colony splits into two if enough resources are available to sustain a new hive.
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The queen is mother of all the bees in hive, responsible for laying all the eggs that will become female worker bees and male drones.