RESEARCH REVIEWED: The Lates in Honey Bee Research: 'Where dose the honey go ?'

摘要

The typical arrangement of honey within a honey bee nest is an image familiar to almost all beekeepers. Honey in beehives and in nests in the wild is primarily stored above and to some extent beside the area where brood is reared. Even the name of thebox beekeepers add to their hives in hopes of garnering surplus honey for later extraction, "super," suggests the correct placement location is on top of the hive above the brood nest. This situation allows temperate-adapted honey bees (such as those that originated from Europe) to localize a substantial surplus of food that can be efficiently utilized during cold weather when the Winter cluster moves slowly upward, into and through the stored honey. Initially, it was widely held that honey bees preferentially deposit their nectar loads in areas above and beside the brood nest (the "honey-zone"). Later experiments suggested that honey bees place their nectar loads randomly within the brood nest and subsequently remove it from brood-zone areas (Camazine, 1991).