What size are winter bees?

[Monbees]

Is it possible to tell the difference with the naked eye between winter and summer bees? Seeing my bees foraging on winter honeysuckle they seem to me to be quite small. I am wondering if the queen has been laying for a while and these are the first of 2020 generation bees?

 

[masterBK]

Not without dissecting them to look at their fat bodies and possibly their hypothalamus glands!
The first bumblebees produced by a queenbumble establishing her nest are small but this doesn't apply to honeybees

 

[Amari]

Is it possible to tell the difference with the naked eye between winter and summer bees? Seeing my bees foraging on winter honeysuckle they seem to me to be quite small. I am wondering if the queen has been laying for a while and these are the first of 2020 generation bees?

Snap! Two days ago I was watching my bees alighting on the landing boards and others munching fondant. I had the strong impression that they were smaller than I remembered them in autumn!

 

[masterBK]

If you look at the ones leaving the hive you might find they look bigger than those coming back as they could well be full of faeces which distends the rectum and hence the abdomen.

 

[drex]

According to honeybee suite, what marks a bee as a winter bee is its enlarged fat body, hence a bigger bee. As winter progresses the bee uses the stores in the fat body, and hence I would think appears smaller.

 

[Monbees]

Snap! Two days ago I was watching my bees alighting on the landing boards and others munching fondant. I had the strong impression that they were smaller than I remembered them in autumn!

Reading around the subject, there is some suggestion that if regular comb is older and dark, not changed for, say, three years, the available space for larvae to develop becomes smaller, more like small cell size. So bees produced from these cells are smaller.
I am wondering if this could be why my bees seem smaller than previously?

 

[enrico]

Reading around the subject, there is some suggestion that if regular comb is older and dark, not changed for, say, three years, the available space for larvae to develop becomes smaller, more like small cell size. So bees produced from these cells are smaller.
I am wondering if this could be why my bees seem smaller than previously?

Not that you would notice probably but some bees seem smaller. The black bees always seem bigger, but I think it is to do with the colouring more than actual size.
E

 

[madasafish]

As bees grow older, the fine hair on their bodies wears away and they appear less bulky..

 

[Erichalfbee]

Is it possible to tell the difference with the naked eye between winter and summer bees? Seeing my bees foraging on winter honeysuckle they seem to me to be quite small. I am wondering if the queen has been laying for a while and these are the first of 2020 generation bees?

Are they fluffy?