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In winter the hive usually contains a minimum of seven thousand or maximum ten thousand bees.
A hive which is densely populated, in springtime or summertime can contain sixty or fifty five thousand bees.
But during the winter the number of bees is drastically reduced, It remains those which were born at last. They must endure and survive to the winter until February when reproduction begins.
A bee in a winter period, among the last born, live up from five and a half months to almost six months. This because they have to bear all the winter cycle.
However, bees that born in springtime, as they are foraging bees and must come and go in order to collect honey, they use their wings and they get tired, they live forty five days on average.
The foraging bee
A foraging bee (a bee that goes from flower to flower) starts to gather nectar twenty five days after its birth. Before that, they follow several cycles: First cleaning, feeding and finally they begin to gather nectar. The most experts become explorers.
The explorer bees
The explorer bees are the bees that fetch the nest, the place where are the flowers, where there is more food. These go and return, communicate to the others gathering place and make a drawing directly on the wooden frame for the foraging bees. Following the drawing foraging bees go to the gathering point.
There are several types of drawings, but the principal is the circle, when the explorer bee come back, it makes the abdomen dance, it dances in a circle on the wooden frame. When the circle is small, the distance to get to the place of harvest is more distant. When the circle is big the distance for gather nectar is closer. And then it draws in this circle a diagonal line, the diagonal line indicates the direction of the sun. The foraging bee looks at the size of the circle and understands the distance. The direction is in relation with the path drawn on the circle.
If the nectar is close they draw a kind of zig zag, to say go out! Find it! It’s just here around.
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