When a honey bee colony faces the sudden destruction of its home—whether by a predator attack, severe weather event, or human intervention—the collective response is a rapid series of survival mechanisms. This event instantly exposes the colony’s internal environment, triggering instinctual behaviors designed to maintain the group’s integrity. The entire colony shifts its focus from daily maintenance to immediate preservation and the long-term mission of finding and building a new permanent residence.
Immediate Survival: Formation of the Cluster
The first and most urgent action taken by the surviving adult bees is to form a dense, temporary cluster known as a bivouac. This physical aggregation, where thousands of bees cling to one another, is a collective act of thermoregulation designed to protect the group from exposure. The bees on the surface create a dense, insulating mantle, while those in the interior maintain a more porous, warmer core.
The bees generate heat by rapidly vibrating their flight muscles, a process that does not involve moving their wings. They actively maintain the cluster’s core temperature near the optimal \(35^circ\) Celsius, which is necessary for any remaining viable brood or the queen. By contracting the cluster in colder air or expanding it when temperatures rise, the bees control their microclimate.
Prioritizing the Queen and Salvaging Resources
Once the immediate threat of exposure is managed, the colony’s next priority is ensuring the safety and location of the queen, as the colony cannot persist without her egg-laying function. Worker bees instinctively surround her, forming a tight retinue that protects her physically and keeps her warm within the cluster’s core. Her presence stabilizes the workers, who rely on her pheromones to maintain social cohesion and coordinate their efforts.
Simultaneously, the bees attempt to salvage usable resources from the wreckage. Worker bees gorge themselves on honey from damaged comb fragments, storing the energy in their honey stomachs. Retrieving this stored energy is a race against time, as it fuels the upcoming relocation and the initial phases of rebuilding.
The Relocation Mission: Scout Bees and Decision Making
With the queen secured and resources internalized, the colony initiates the long-term solution by dispatching specialized scout bees. These experienced foragers search for a new, suitable nesting cavity, often looking for a space that is protected, dry, and offers an internal volume greater than 20 liters. They typically favor locations like tree hollows or rock crevices that provide defense from predators and the elements.
When a scout finds a candidate site, she returns to the cluster and performs a “waggle dance” to communicate the location and quality of her discovery. The dance’s duration and vigor correlate directly with the site’s quality, conveying distance and direction relative to the position of the sun. Multiple scouts advertise different locations, leading to a period of collective debate on the cluster’s surface.
To reach a consensus, scouts for one site may use a “stop signal”—a brief head-butt and vibrational pulse—to discourage other bees from dancing for a competing site. This system of positive and negative feedback continues until a quorum of 15 to 20 scouts is reached at the single best location. Once this threshold is met, the scouts perform a piping signal to prepare the clustered colony for a synchronized flight to their new home.
Rebuilding the Colony Structure
Upon arrival at the chosen cavity, the rebuilding of the colony structure begins immediately. The first task is to draw new beeswax comb, which is the physical foundation for all future colony activities, including brood rearing and food storage. Worker bees secrete wax from glands on their abdomen, but this process is energetically expensive, requiring the consumption of about 6 to 8 kilograms of honey to produce one kilogram of wax.
The initial comb-building phase is fueled by the honey the bees carried in their stomachs, which serves as a metabolic reserve. Once the first cells are constructed, the queen can begin laying eggs, though a new worker bee requires 21 days to develop from egg to adult.
The new colony is vulnerable during this period, having limited comb for insulation and food storage, and a reduced population to defend the nest and forage. It takes many weeks, often months, for the colony to raise enough new workers to replace the lost population and store the vast amounts of honey required to survive the upcoming winter.