Winter bees

[Millet]

My edit functions work just fine

Don't we know it..

 

[Monbees]

I seem to come back to questions about winter bees rather regularly each year, but I haven't found the answer to my most recent pondering on this thread - forgive me if I have overlooked something.
I cannot remember which recent thread made mention of something like ... "September, gives plenty of time for the queen to produce winter bees" That is not word for word, but the gist. Is the queen, ie the egg, the instigator of winter bees or is it the way the workers treat/feed the egg and larvae? I think the egg, once fertilised on the mating flight must remain the same year round?

 

[drdrday]

I seem to come back to questions about winter bees rather regularly each year, but I haven't found the answer to my most recent pondering on this thread - forgive me if I have overlooked something.
I cannot remember which recent thread made mention of something like ... "September, gives plenty of time for the queen to produce winter bees" That is not word for word, but the gist. Is the queen, ie the egg, the instigator of winter bees or is it the way the workers treat/feed the egg and larvae? I think the egg, once fertilised on the mating flight must remain the same year round?

The apiarist has a good blog on winter bees, which might answer some of your questions:
https://www.theapiarist.org/winter-bee-production/

 

[Boston Bees]

I seem to come back to questions about winter bees rather regularly each year, but I haven't found the answer to my most recent pondering on this thread - forgive me if I have overlooked something.
I cannot remember which recent thread made mention of something like ... "September, gives plenty of time for the queen to produce winter bees" That is not word for word, but the gist. Is the queen, ie the egg, the instigator of winter bees or is it the way the workers treat/feed the egg and larvae? I think the egg, once fertilised on the mating flight must remain the same year round?

The egg is the same of course, and I believe the brood food is similar/the same. However, bees born in Sept/Oct etc just "know" to generate (and retain) a greater amount of a compound called vitellogenin, which helps bees store food reserves in their body. This gives them bigger food glands and higher levels of sugar and fat in their blood, or so I read!

How "winter bees" know to do this, I do not know.

Of course, in addition to the vitellogenin, winter bees live longer simply because they don't wear themselves out foraging as summer bees do.